BorderObs

BorderObs is a place for the publication of observations and scientific comments on current societal developments. BorderObs is open to all members of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies as well as to guest authors.

The short articles are written in simple language, can be of essayistic character and refer to borders and border spaces in the Greater Region and beyond. Proposals can be sent in German, French or English to borderstudies@uni.lu.

Franco-German cross-border vocational training – recent challenges arising from administrative obstacles (Ines Funk & Florian Weber, Saarland University), 13/03/2024

Text available in German.

Ines Funk, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University

Florian Weber, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University

Reflections on Complexity-oriented Border Research (Christian Wille, University of Luxembourg), 05/02/2024

Since the mid-2010s, the idea that borders are complex phenomena has become increasingly prevalent in border studies (Gerst et al. 2018; Scott 2021; Wille 2021; Brambilla 2023; Wille et al. forthcoming). This is linked to aiming to overcome simplistic views of borders that are based on a line concept and closure principle, as well as the idea of a territorial mosaic of separate national containers. Despite the emergence of a complexity discourse, there is hardly any work that explains what exactly is meant by complex borders or complexity-oriented border research (for example Gerst et al. 2018; Brambilla 2023; Wille forthcoming).

Status Quo

Rather, border studies are characterized by a diffuse understanding of complexity and a plurality of what is qualified as complex at borders. The singularity, multiplicity, multidimensionality, multivalence, relationality, agonality, or diffuseness of borders are often declared to be complex without reflecting on this qualification in more detail. An everyday understanding of complexity that prematurely equates the term with complicatedness or a lack of clarity seems to be widespread in the debate. However, a look at complexity theories shows that progressive trends in border studies are quite compatible with complexity thinking. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to think more closely about what complexity-oriented border research can be and what it can do.

Core Ideas of Complexity Thinking

To put it pointedly, complexity research focuses on material or social structures and their emergent properties, which the elements of which they are composed unfold in self-dynamic processes (Manson/O’Sullivan 2006, 678; Cilliers 2016, 141). The guiding principle here is the view that the whole – such as a border – is more than the sum of its constitutive parts. Or formulated analytically: The properties of complex structures cannot be explained through their elements but through the unpredictable and performative interplay of their elements. For this reason, the notions of interaction and emergence are crucial in complexity thinking; they indicate the focus on the reciprocal relationships between the structure’s elements and the properties of the structure that emerge from their interplay. Complexity researchers are primarily interested in how the elements involved interact to form which patterns or orders, that then represent the structures’ properties.
 

^{Figure 1: Emergent orders as properties of complex structures (symbolic image), © gremlin.}

Textural Border Ontology

These core ideas of complexity thinking provide reference to how complexity-oriented border research can be stringently aligned. This includes the elementary question of how borders can be seen as a complex of elements. Here, the texturalization of borders offers suitable starting points; it stands for the recent emergence of approaches that think bordering processes more comprehensively: in the (total) plurality of the practices, dimensions, actors and forms relevant to them, as well as partly in the interplay of these in space and time. Such approaches include, for example, the ethnographic border regime analysis (Transit Migration Research Group 2007), borderscapes (Brambilla 2015), bordertextures (Weier et al. 2018), and the assemblage approach (Sohn 2016). They follow a textural ontology of the border and present it as a trans-territorial, trans-scalar, or trans-temporal complex consisting of more or less interrelated polymorphic elements.
 

Internal Border Views

The focus of complexity theories on relationships and the resulting orders is both a gain and a challenge for border research. On the one hand, the idea of emergent orders can be connected to the ordering and ordered principle of the border. Here, complexity-oriented border research asks how, and which orders produce textural structures that become effective as borderings. On the other hand, this focus requires a decentering of the elements involved in bordering processes and an observation position located in the performative interplay of the elements. This is because the empirical observation in the performative ‘happening of the border’ allows a view into the complex interplay of the elements and thus insights into the self-dynamic emergences of b/orderings. Methodologies such as borderness (Green 2012), border as method (Mezzadra/Neilson 2013), migration as a prism (Hess 2018), bordertexturing (Weier et al. 2018), or border praxeology (Connor 2023; Gerst/Krämer 2017) offer useful starting points for such empirical internal border views.
 

Border Complexities as a Perspective

The discussed reflections on complexity-oriented border research should be followed by a series of further questions concerning the construction of the research object, corresponding methods, disciplinary cooperation, and much more. For further debate, a concept is proposed that does not declare borders to be complex per se but rather offers a complexity-sensitive perspective on borders: Border Complexities is intended to stand for a concept inspired by complexity thinking that (a) sees borders as relational structures, (b) focuses on the self-dynamic and unpredictable interplay of their elements, and (c) on its emergent dis/orders, which become effective as borderings. Border Complexities thus connects to the textural ontology of the border, takes an internal view of the border, and goes analytically further than asking which dimensions play a role in bordering processes or to what extent the elements involved are territorially, actor-related, or scalarly diffused. Bordering processes that are viewed through the complexity lens cannot – as is common in current border studies – be explained by the plurality or polymorphism of the elements involved and their spatial distribution. Rather, Border Complexities addresses the emergent moment that manifests where the texture of the elements involved in bordering processes is merely a prerequisite for making their mutual relationships visible and analyzable – as an interplay effective for emerging dis/orders. Border Complexities thus follows the meaning of complexus (lat.) in a twofold manner: On the one hand, the concept addresses “what is woven together” (Morin 2007, 6); on the other hand, it addresses the reciprocal relationships of the relevant elements and the resulting b/orderings.
 

Note: This blog post is based on the anthology in press: Wille, Christian/Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin/Bretschneider, Falk/Grimm-Hamen, Sylvie/Wagner, Hedwig (forthcoming) (eds.): Border Complexities and Logics of Dis/Order. Baden-Baden: Nomos, doi:10.5771/9783748922292. Preview

Christian Wille, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Luxembourg

 

References

Brambilla, Chiara. 2023. Rethinking Borders Through a Complexity Lens: Complex Textures Towards a Politics of Hope. Journal of Borderlands Studies, online first: 1–20.  doi:10.1080/08865655.2023.2289112.

Brambilla, Chiara. 2015. Exploring the Critical Potential of the Borderscapes Concept. Geopolitics 20, no. 1: 14–34. doi:10.1080/14650045.2014.884561.

Cilliers, Paul. 2016. Complexity, deconstruction and relativism. Critical Complexity. Collected Essays, ed. Preiser, Rika, 139–152, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Connor, Ulla. 2023. Territoriale Grenzen als Praxis. Zur Erfindung der Grenzregion in grenzüberschreitender Kartografie, Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Gerst, Dominik, Maria Klessmann, Hannes Krämer, Mitja Sienknecht and, Peter Ulrich. 2018. Komplexe Grenzen. Aktuelle Perspektiven der Grenzforschung. Berliner Debatte Initial 29, no. 1: 3–11.

Gerst, Dominik and, Hannes Krämer. 2017. Methodologische Prinzipien einer allgemeinen Grenzsoziologie. Geschlossene Gesellschaften. Verhandlungen des 38. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bamberg 2016, ed. Lessenich, Stephan, 1–10, online: https://publikationen.soziologie.de/index.php/kongressband_2016 (15/03/2023).

Green, Sarah. 2012. A Sense of Border. A Companion to Border Studies, eds. Wilson, Thomas M., and Hastings, 573–592. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

Hess, Sabine. 2018. Border as Conflict Zone. Critical Approaches on the Border and Migration Nexus. Migration. Changing Concepts, Critical Approaches, ed. Bachmann-Medick, Doris and, Jens Kugele, 83–99, Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.

Manson, Steven and, David O’Sullivan. 2006. Complexity theory in the study of space and place. Environment and Planning A 38: 677–692. doi:10.1068/a37100.

Mezzadra, Sandro and, Brett Neilson. 2013. Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham/London: Duke University Press.

Morin, Edgar. 2007. Restricted complexity, general complexity. Worldviews, Sciences and Us – Philosophy and Complexity, eds. Gershenson, Carlos, Diederik Aerts and, Bruce Edminds, 5–29. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

Scott, James. 2021. Bordering, ordering and everyday cognitive geographies. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 112, no. 1, 26–33. doi:10.1111/tesg.12464.

Sohn, Christophe. 2016. Navigating borders’ multiplicity: the critical potential of assemblage. Area 48, no. 2: 183–189.

Transit Migration Forschungsgruppe. 2007. Turbulente Ränder. Neue Perspektiven auf Migration an den Grenzen Europas, Bielefeld: transcript.

Weier, Sebastian, Astrid M. Fellner, Joachim Frenk, Daniel Kazmaier, Eva Michely, Christoph Vatter, Romana Weiershausen and, Christian Wille. 2018. Bordertexturen als transdisziplinärer Ansatz zur Untersuchung von Grenzen. Ein Werkstattbericht. Berliner Debatte Initial 29, no. 1: 73–83.

Wille, Christian. forthcoming. Border Complexities. Outlines and Perspectives of a Complexity Shift in Border Studies. Border Complexities and Logics of Dis/Order, eds. Wille, Christian, Carolin Leutloff-Grandits, Falk Bretschneider, Sylvie Grimm-Hamen and, Hedwig Wagner, Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Wille, Christian. 2021. Vom processual shift zum complexity shift: aktuelle analytische Trends der Grenzforschung. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium, eds. Gerst, Dominik, Maria Klessmann, and Hannes Krämer, 106–120. Baden-Baden: Nomos. doi:10.5771/9783845295305-106.

Wille, Christian, Carolin Grandits-Leutloff, Falk Bretschneider, Sylvie Grimm-Hamen and, Hedwig Wagner. forthcoming. Border Complexities and Logics of Dis/Order, Baden-Baden: Nomos. doi:10.5771/9783748922292.

Opportunities and frustrations of a closed border regime between Tajikistan and Afghanistan in Badakhshan: Back to remoteness? (Mélanie Sadozaï, George Washington University), 16/08/2023

In February 2020, the authorities of Tajikistan closed all of the country’s borders, including the one shared with Afghanistan, to control the spread of COVID-19. In February 2021, Tajikistan progressively facilitated air travel, however, takeover of the land border crossing points (BCP) in Northern Afghanistan by the Taliban reaffirmed Dushanbe’s decision to maintain closure of the border. Ever since, this unprecedented border regime has put an end to the resource-producing activities taking place along the common border in the Badakhshan region but have benefited the central State of Tajikistan.

 

A remote mountainous borderland region

The border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan is 1,374 km long, including approximately 910 km located in the Pamir Mountains, separating the autonomous province of Badakhshan in Tajikistan from the province of Badakhshan in Afghanistan (Figure 1). The majority of borderland settlements are located more than 1,000 m above sea level. The topographic aspect of this border is highly significant. Indeed, the province of Badakhshan in Tajikistan “qualifies as a geographically isolated province within a landlocked country, even though it has three international borders allowing it to reach global markets” (Sadozaï and Blondin 2022, 290).

^{Figure 1: The borderlands of Badakhshan as of June 2023. Map designed by author.}

In addition to the physical isolation, the lack of infrastructure investment by the Tajikistani government to access the province of Badakhshan, and the border with Afghanistan thereof, has shown a political neglect for the territorial periphery. As a result, not all villages are accessible between October and May, as tumultuous weather prevents traffic flow on the only road connecting Dushanbe to the province, thus leading to seasonal isolation. The province is inhabited by a religious and linguistic minority, who follow Ismailism, a branch of Shia Islam, and speak Pamiri languages. Across the Pyanj River, in Afghanistan, Ismaili Pamiri speakers also inhabit the borderland villages. Borderland communities in Tajikistan’s Badakhshan have therefore been isolated at various levels: by the topography, the absence of state-led initiatives to open up the province, and their minority status in a country where Tajik ethnonationalism weighs heavily in official narratives. Consequently, they have relied on cross-border contacts with Afghanistan spurred in the beginning of the 2000s to overcome their condition of forced remoteness and reconnect with members of the same community on the other side.

 

The closed border regime as a disruption of cross-border contacts

With the support of international organizations, the borderlands of Badakhshan have been the symbol of a successful cross-border cooperation (CBC) in Central Asia since the fall of the Soviet Union. This was symbolized by cross-border markets and bridges, medical cross-border programs, tourism infrastructure, and energy provision through cross-border power grids and irrigation systems. In addition, families who had been separated by the demarcation of the border in 1895 and its full closure during the Soviet era (1936-1991) reconnected with their relatives. Between the early 2000s and 2020, the borderlands of Badakhshan were economically and socially beneficial for both Afghans and Tajikistanis and this border between the two country thus qualified as a “resource” (Sadozaï 2021b).

^{Figure 2: Cross-border bridge between Tajikistan (left) and Afghanistan (right) in Darwaz, July 2021. Picture by author.}

The COVID-19 pandemic hitting the region in February 2020 and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 have disrupted these cross-border contacts. On the grounds that the Taliban are not recognized as their official counterparts, the Tajikistani government has refused to open the border, preventing families, tourists, medical workers and patients from crossing, and markets from operating.

Interviews conducted since the closure of the border—as early as July 2021 (Sadozaï 2021a), then in June 2022 and April 2023—have all pointed to the frustration felt by the borderland communities regarding the closed border regime. For example, Tajikistani healthcare experts are not allowed to work in Afghanistan where they earned a higher salary, and Afghan patients can no longer be treated in modern Tajikistani facilities. On the Afghan border, the closure has affected two important income-generating activities. First, tourism, in both provinces of Badakhshan, as tourists would cross the border from Tajikistan to get to Afghanistan, instead of traveling from Kabul. Second, cross-border market trade no longer demonstrates economic asymmetry, which resulted namely in access to cheaper products for Tajikistani buyers and new consumers for Afghan sellers. Although data quantifying economic losses is not yet available, families and individuals in border villages shared their concerns during the interviews and whished the border could reopen to welcome traders and tourists.

These interdependencies become more acute under a closed border regime, since it is by feeling the lack of resources produced by the border that individuals fully realize the need to reach them. The partial or total closure of borders have a direct impact on economic and social dynamics, as well as fundamental determinants of the cross-border labor market. While for borderlanders, a closed border situation results in dissatisfaction, it brings political opportunities for the government of Tajikistan.

 

The closed border regime as an instrument to “re-centralize the periphery”

The context of controlling mobility in order to contain the pandemic revealed that the political instrument used by central states was the national border (Hamez et al. 2020; Simonneau 2020, 93). Tajikistan has chosen to follow this pattern as well and closed all its national borders even before declaring the first cases of COVID-19 in the country. In February 2021, the country reopened its air borders, allowing passengers to enter at airports. Land borders, on the other hand, have remained closed, with the exception of the Uzbekistan border, a few intermittent border crossings with Kyrgyzstan, and the Sher Khan Bandar BCP with Afghanistan.

Zooming out of the micro-level cross-border (non)interactions previously described, the State of Tajikistan manages to benefit from the closed border regime. At the economic level, closing the border is a tool for the central government to redirect cross-border practices within Tajikistan. At the political level, the central state can appear more present in the only autonomous province of the country mostly inhabited by a linguistic and religious minority. Badakhshan is also the only place in Tajikistan that has seen anti-government demonstrations. Closing the border reminds the borderlanders of the central state’s presence and power at the periphery. After the Taliban took control of the border posts, military exercises on the Afghan border increased on the Tajikistani side in a desire to show off military prowess. The central government has also used force to crack down on peaceful protests occurring along the border in Tajikistan to contest domestic issues. Despite being unrelated to the Taliban’s presence on the other side of the river, the protests have been met with government offensive under the false pretense of “anti-terror” operations linked to the Afghan border (Tondo 2022).

What one observes in the borderlands of Badakhshan in Tajikistan is a form of “state re-territorialization” (Radil, Castan Pinos, and Ptak 2021, 134), impeding upon the well-being of borderlanders. The state is the sole decision maker when it comes to opening or closing the border. It has the coercive capacity to prevent essential activities and vital contacts for the borderland populations relying on those to surpass the constraint of physical and political remoteness. The central state of Tajikistan has the ultimate administrative power to stop activities that produce benefits for local communities. The state, by closing the border, is re-centralizing the periphery.

This one decision to close the border and to keep it closed shows the disconnection between the center and the territorial margins in Tajikistan, reinforces the political distance between the two, and raises the question of remoteness in every shape and form. This holds even more true as this decision is taken in the capital, far from the border areas, where the effects of a closed border regime is most felt (Ikotun, Akhigbe, and Okunade 2021, 306).

While many in Badakhshan perceived physical remoteness during the pandemic as a natural protective barrier against the spread of the virus (Blondin 2020), another form of remoteness was created by the closure of international borders: that of being isolated within the national borders. In Tajikistan’s Badakhshan province, the closed border regime confined inhabitants in a territory closed off from both the inside and outside, amplified by the historical remoteness created by the mountains. The closed border regime in place since February 2020 is once again confronting the Badakhshan borderland inhabitants with their remoteness.

 

Concluding remarks: A matter of political will

Although it provides political opportunities for the central power, the closed border regime creates local frustrations among populations which used to benefit from the border once open. This piece focuses on the region of Badakhshan, which has been subject to a closed border regime for over three years. However, it is important to note that one BCP remains open along the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, the Sher Khan Bandar BCP located in the province of Khatlon (Tajikistan) and neighboring the province of Kunduz (Afghanistan). This situation of a semi-open border recognizes the unique characteristics of a closed border regime.

There, people and goods have been able to cross the border as early as July 2021, only three weeks after the Taliban took control of the BCP (Asia-Plus 2021). Two 23-year-old Afghans living in Tajikistan interviewed in April 2023 and June 2023 explained that they managed to cross on both sides of the border. However, one of them acknowledged the nuanced dynamic at play: “Sometimes, Tajikistan closes the border. It’s arbitrary and we have to always ask beforehand to make sure we can cross” (interview with the author, Khorog, April 29, 2023).

The example of the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan shows that global phenomena, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Taliban’s arrival to power in Afghanistan, can highly impact micro-level interactions. More importantly, this example also proves that the act of opening and closing borders is an instrument to impose political decisions to the territorial periphery and, above all, essentially a matter of political will.

Mélanie Sadozaï, George Washington University (USA), Woodrow Wilson Center (USA), National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (France)

 

References

Asia-Plus. 2021. “Taliban Movement Reportedly Waives Visa Requirements for Tajik Drivers at Sher Khan Bandar Crossing.” Asia Plus. July 13, 2021.

Blondin, Suzy. 2020. “Der Blick vom Pamirgebirge in Tadschikistan auf eine Globale Pandemie.” Zentralasian-Analysen 31 May (141): 3–7.

Hamez, Grégory, Frédérique Morel-Doridat, Kheira Oudina, Marine Le Calvez, Mathias Boquet, Nicolas Dorkel, Nicolas Greiner, et al. 2020. “La frontière ‘nationale’ brouillée par le Covid-19.” In Bordering in Pandemic Times: Insights into the COVID-19 Lockdown, edited by Christian Wille and Rebecca Kanesu, 63–67. Luxembourg/Trier: UniGR-CBS.

Ikotun, Omotomilola, Allwell Akhigbe, and Samuel Okunade. 2021. “Sustainability of Borders in a Post-COVID-19 World.” Politikon 48 (2): 297–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1913804.

Radil, Steven M., Jaume Castan Pinos, and Thomas Ptak. 2021. “Borders Resurgent: Towards a Post-Covid-19 Global Border Regime?” Space and Polity 25 (1): 132–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2020.1773254.

Sadozaï, Mélanie. 2021a. “Taliban at the Border: A New Regime Neighboring Tajikistan.” Central Asia Program, no. 267.

Sadozaï, Mélanie. 2021b. “The Tajikistani-Afghan Border in Gorno-Badakhshan: Resources of a War-Torn Neighborhood.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 38 (3): 461–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2021.1948898.

Sadozaï, Mélanie, and Suzy Blondin. 2022. “More Remote Yet More Connected? Physical Accessibility and New International Contacts in Tajikistan’s Pamirs Since 1991.” Problems of Post-Communism 70 (3): 290–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2022.2149557.

Simonneau, Damien. 2020. “Gérer les frontières par temps de pandémie.” L’Économie politique 87 (3): 91–98. https://doi.org/10.3917/leco.087.0091.

Tondo, Lorenzo. 2022. “Twenty-Five Ethnic Pamiris Killed by Security Forces in Tajikistan Protests.” The Guardian, May 19, 2022.

 

Cultural Border Studies – On the institutionalization of a dynamic research field (Christian Wille, University of Luxembourg), 28/06/2023

Cultural Border Studies focus on the social and symbolic dimensions of borders. They emerged from the intersection of the cultural turn in Border Studies with the border turn in Cultural Studies and address everyday cultural and artistic-aesthetic issues. During the resurgence of borders, Cultural Border Studies have gained further importance, which is reflected in their progressive institutionalization.

 

Scientific Societies

The leading scientific society for Border Studies is the Association for Borderlands Studies, which was founded in the United States in 1976 and initially gathered border scholars working on the U.S.-Mexican border. As Border Studies developed, border researchers from around the world joined the society. Today, the Association for Borderlands Studies regularly organizes an annual meeting in North America and a World Conference held every four years. The World Conference in 2023 was hosted by Ben-Gurion University à Eilat (Israel) in the Israel–Jordan–Egypt border triangle. The annual meetings and World Conferences of the scientific society increasingly list Cultural Studies papers and panels in their programs and have established themselves as central platforms for the global community of border scholars.

 

Figure 1: UniGR-CBS border scholars at the 2023 World Conference of the Association for Borderlands Studies in Eilat (Israel).		Figure 2: The section "Cultural Border Studies" at the annual conference 2018 of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft e.V. in Hildesheim (Germany), Photo: UniGR-CBS 2018.

In contrast to the Association for Borderlands Studies, the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft e.V., which plays an essential role in Cultural Border Studies as a scientific society in German-speaking countries, is organized in sections. These stand for thematic working groups, including the section "Cultural Border Studies," which has existed since 2016. It was founded on the initiative of border researchers from the University of Luxembourg, Saarland University, and European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) to specifically develop Cultural Studies questions and approaches within Border Studies and establish them as a research field. The section members meet regularly, cooperate in research and publication projects, and participate in the annual conferences of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft e.V. In 2020, the annual conference "B/Ordering Cultures: Everyday Life, Politics, Aesthetics" (October 8-10) took place at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) in cooperation with the section.

 

Research Centers and Networks

Concerning research centers and networks in Border Studies, the first foundations can be identified in the US-Mexican context (e.g. Center for Latin American and Border Studies (1979), Colegio de la Frontera Norte (1982)), followed by centers in Europe in the 1990s (e.g. Centre for Border Research (1989), Nijmengen Center for Border Research (1998)). From the turn of the millennium onwards, an increasing number of new foundations can be observed, especially in Europe (e.g. Institut des Frontières et Discontinuités (2006), Centre for Border Region Studies (2016)), accompanied by various spatial focuses (e.g. African Borderlands Research Network (2007), Asian Borderlands Research Network (2008), VERA Centre for Russian and Border Studies (2011)).

In German-speaking countries, two research centers have a decidedly Cultural Studies orientation. These include the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, which was established in 2013 at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder). The participating scholars from the European University Viadrina and other universities analyze bordering, ordering and migration processes from an interdisciplinary perspective. Most recently, they have held the conferences "Contesting 21st Century B/Orders" (6-8/9/2023) and "B/ORDERS IN MOTION: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives" (15-17/11/2018).

 

Figure 3: The interdisciplinary UniGR Center of Expertise UniGR-CBS introduces itself. Promotion Video 2022.		Figure 4: Opening of the conference "B/ORDERS IN MOTION: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives", European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder). Photo: Lisa Melcher 2018.

In addition, the UniGR-Center for Border Studies should be mentioned. It was founded in 2014 as a cross-border research network and transformed in 2022 into an interdisciplinary UniGR Center of Expertise. This includes the border scholars of the association "University of the Greater Region (UniGR)", i.e., the Saarland University, University of Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University Kaiserslautern-Landau (Germany), University of Lorraine (France), University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and the University of Liège (Belgium). Their research interests range from Cross-Border Studies (e.g., labor market and spatial planning in border regions) to Cultural Border Studies (e.g., culture, language, identities) to theoretical-conceptual issues in Border Studies.

 

Figure 5: "Atelier Bordertextures" lecture series with border researcher Johan Schimanski. Photo: UniGR-CBS 2018.		Figure 6: UniGR-CBS conference "Border Renaissance. Recent Developments in Territorial, Cultural and Linguistic Border Studies" (February 2022). Video UniGR-CBS 2022.

 

The cultural studies-oriented scholars of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies are organized in the working group "Bordertextures" and test an approach that understands borders as a dynamic and powerful texture. Most recently, the UniGR-Center for Border Studies organized the international conference "Border Renaissance. Recent Developments in Territorial, Cultural and Linguistic Border Studies" (4-5/2/2022) and the Association for Borderlands Studies Europe Conference "Differences and Discontinuities in a 'Europe without Borders'" (04-07/10/2016).

 

Publication Media

The relevant publication medium in Border Studies is the Journal of Borderlands Studies, launched in the USA in 1986. After predominantly publishing results of Geopolitical Border Studies, the journal has opened to Cultural Studies issues and approaches. In addition, the open access journal Borders in Globalization Review, established at the University of Victoria, British Columbia as part of the research program "Borders in Globalization," has been introduced since 2019 and addresses Border Studies in the Arts, Cultural Studies, and social sciences.

In addition, various book series that go beyond geopolitical considerations in favor of Cultural Studies considerations have been established. These include the Routledge Borderlands Studies series (ed. by James W. Scott and Ilkka Liikanen), which publishes works on cross-border linkages, everyday cultures, etc. in border regions in North America and Europe, but also in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Rethinking Borders series (ed. by Sarah Green and Hastings Donnan) was established as part of the EastBordNet - Remaking Borders in Eastern Europe project (COST 2009-2013) and is now published by Manchester University Press. It provides a platform for preferably ethnographic research that addresses the everyday cultural experience of borders and mobilities.
 

 

Figure 7: The Journal of Borderlands Studies and handbooks of Border Studies with Cultural Studies references. Photo: UniGR-CBS 2023.		Figure 8: The book series "Border Studies. Cultures, Spaces, Orders" (Nomos-Verlag) with a focus on Cultural Border Studies. Photo: UniGR-CBS 2022.

 

In the German-speaking world, the book series "Border Studies. Cultures, Spaces, Orders" (ed. by Astrid M. Fellner, Konstanze Jungbluth, Hannes Krämer, Christian Wille) has established itself as a forum for Cultural Border Studies. Published in German or English by Nomos-Verlag, it includes Cultural Studies analyses of borders from literary, linguistic, sociological, or socio-anthropological perspectives.

Even though Border Studies as an interdisciplinary field of research does not have a defined canon of theories and approaches, various introductory handbooks have been released. These include The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies (Wastl-Walter 2011) or Introduction to Border Studies (Sevastianov et al. 2015), which primarily address Geopolitical Border Studies. Cultural Studies perspectives are more likely to be considered in A Companion to Border Studies (Wilson and Donnan 2012) or A Research Agenda for Border Studies (Scott 2020), each of which includes everyday cultural dimensions of borders. The handbook "Grenzforschung. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium" (Gerst et al. 2021) is the most recent introduction in the German-speaking world with a focus on Cultural Studies.
 

Text available in German and French.

Christian Wille, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Luxembourg

Planning Borderlands: Investigative approaches to spatial development in border areas and first findings from the Brandenburg-Polish borderland (Kirsten Mangels, Nino Pfundstein, Karina Pallagst, Benjamin Blaser (Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau)), 08/05/2023

As cross-border linkages in the EU are intensifying, cross-border territorial development is becoming increasingly important. Borderlands are understood as cross-border regions whose scope is fixed or varies depending on the thematic perspective. Cross-border regions are investigated by spatial planners as functional areas and laboratories of integration. Due to their ambiguous character and without formalised planning, cross-border spatial development is organised through cross-border governance. The subproject Planning Borderlands investigates how various forms of borderlands are shaped by spatial development and how cross-border cooperation is organized in this context. The thematic focus of the project Planning Borderlands is on “Sicherung der Daseinsvorsorge” (provision of services of general interest).

Methodologically, this contribution is based on the analysis of planning documents that apply to the Brandenburg-Lubusz border region and on a series of interviews with actors in spatial development in the border region.

 

Cross-border regions as structures of cross-border governance for spatial development

Cross-border regions as structures of governance of cross-border cooperation are operating outside of administrative entities. Therefore, they are based on good will, informal instruments, and cooperation between public, private or non-profit actors (Blatter, 2004). Instead of government, cross-border spatial development is organised in a form of governance. The introduction of the Interreg A programme in 1990 strongly promoted the emergence of cross-border regions and pushed the formalisation of cross-border cooperation.

The investigation of a possible institutionalisation of a cross-border cooperation of spatial development experts and thus a significant participation of spatial development experts or entities in cross-border cooperation in the topic of services of general interest represents an essential component of the Planning Borderlands project.

 

Cross-border cooperation in spatial planning in the Brandenburg-Lubusz region

In the preparation process of binding spatial development programmes and plans, there is mutual cross-border participation of the relevant planning authorities. It is required by law that the draft documents have to be submitted to the neighbouring planning authorities for information and comment. Thus, it is possible, to speak of an institutionalised exchange of information on objectives and contents of the spatial development plans. However, the actors consider the influence on the contents of the plans through this participation to be marginal.

In addition, there is an institutionalised cooperation between German and Polish spatial planning actors at the national level and at the level of the Länder or voivodeships through the German-Polish Committee for Spatial Planning. In addition to a regular exchange, this committee developed the "Common Future Vision for the German-Polish Interaction Area” (Ausschuss für Raumordnung), which has no binding effect on planning, but does formulate guidelines for spatial development for planning authorities in the German-Polish border region.

A large part of cross-border cooperation in the German-Polish border region is based on the Interreg A cooperation programme Brandenburg-Poland. In the Interreg VA cooperation programme from 2014-2020, a specific objective "Strengthening cross-border cooperation between institutions and citizens in all aspects of public life" was formulated. Because of this objective, it was possible for local authorities and public agencies to apply for funding for cooperation projects addressing the provision of services of general interest. But there was no participation of regional planning authorities in projects under this specific objective.

Further there are two Euroregions operating in the Brandenburg-Lubusz border region. The membership of the Euroregions consists of municipalities as well as social and economic partners, associations and private individuals. Although the Euroregions do not have any planning competences, they prepare development and action concepts, in which they define objectives and projects for spatial development. Through direct exchange with the responsible spatial planning authorities or through the participation of their members in various committees, the Euroregions bring the cross-border dimension of spatial development into exchange.

 

^{Figure 1: There are two contact points for each Euroregion in the Brandenburg-Lubusz border region, one on the German side and one on the Polish side. Source: Nino Pfundstein}  

Cross-border regions as laboratories of integration in spatial development

Cross-border areas can be seen as laboratories of European integration (Opilowska, 2021), in which border areas become interconnected and networked spaces (Paasi, 2009). As small-scale versions of Europe with similar conditions such as “linguistic diversity, cultural traditions and regional knowledge”, they can generate the evidence needed for European territorial development that focusses on the existing territorial capital (Bächtold, 2012).

In the Planning Borderlands project, this raise the question to which extend the development of the border region is a field of action, a spatial "laboratory" for integration for spatial planning experts. Therefore, the Planning Borderlands project examines to which extend actors in spatial planning and development create development ideas beyond the border.

 

The German-Polish border region as a laboratory of integration

The German-Polish Committee for Spatial Planning prepared the "Common Future Vision" as an informal document. The cooperation of the Committee for Spatial Planning can be described as a laboratory of integration, as planning actors from different planning cultures interact, possibly exchanging different value attitudes, conceptual and task understandings and combining them in one common concept. Thematically, the topic of services of general interest is on one hand taken up under an even broader concept in the Vision for a Common Future: quality of life. On the other hand, it is addressed by guidelines on the use of the polycentric settlement patterns or by the improvement of transport connections.

The regional planning authorities did not participate in projects funded by the Interreg A cooperation programme Brandenburg-Poland as possible "laboratories" of integration during the programme period 2014-2020. However, the Brandenburg Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Planning was the Leadpartner of the project entitled "RailBLu Future", in which a vision for accessibility by public transport in the programme area was developed and a target concept for the improvement of cross-border local rail passenger transport was drawn up.

The Euroregions per se have a common cross-border area in mind and accordingly prepare cross-border development and action concepts. They can also be considered active partners in the "laboratory" of integration because they were assigned the role of managing the small project funds within the framework of Interreg A funding. In this function, the implementation of development and action concepts can be accelerated.

 

^{Figure 2: The polycentric settlement structure is represented in the Common Future Vision by urban centres with different functions. Source: German-Polish Committee for Spatial Planning}

Cross-border regions as functional areas

Cross-border functional areas can be defined as areas that extend on at least two sides of a state border, in which citizens and businesses are not restricted to the area on one side of the border but understand the area as a space with various (functional) interdependences. In this context, functional areas can refer to, for example, monocentric or polycentric structures, whereby the areas form around one or more nodes and thereby presuppose a certain spatial proximity and a certain accessibility (Jakubowski 2021).

The various functions of services of general interest (living, working, providing, education and training, leisure, etc.) are spatially distributed in border regions and due to a high individual mobility, in the daily life of citizens borders often are no hindering factor for the consumer satisfaction. The Planning Borderlands project examines the extent to which these realities of life find their way into spatial development. The focus is on the questions whether planning analytically and conceptually addresses the cross-border realities of life, and if so, which concepts and strategies exist on both sides of the border for the provision of services of general interest.

 

Influence of spatial development on the German-Polish border region as a functional area

The German-Polish study area under consideration is a polycentric area that is situated in the catchment area of several centres with "higher-ranking functions" (e.g. Berlin or Zielona Góra) and in which centres with medium-centre and basic-centre services are located. The "Common Future Vision" formulates one field of action “Making better use of the polycentric settlement structure”. One of the visions is that "the practice of sharing social and technical infrastructure resources along the Oder-Neisse-Line will have become common" (Ausschuss für Raumordnung).

To ensure the provision of services of general interest, spatial planning in Germany is based on the designation of central places, with a defined bundle of services and a catchment area to guarantee a good accessibility. In Brandenburg, the federal state is responsible for the designation of higher and middle centres with catchment areas (GL). Regional planning is responsible for the definition of "low order centres", but without the definition of related catchment areas (RPG Oderland-Spree). In addition, the "Landesentwicklungsplan der Hauptstadtregion" includes a transport concept both regarding individual mobility and public transport. None of the programmes display any cross-border visions or concepts.

In the “Plan zagospodarowania przestrzennego województwa lubuskiego”, the spatial development plan of the voivodship of lubuskie, catchment areas are defined by designating urban and rural functional areas. In this system development principles are assigned to different functional areas, which serve as a basis for the utilisation of subsidies. The Plan does not define any standards concerning services or accessibility of the services. The development principles serve, for example, to "strengthen the functional and spatial connection with the city centre”. In addition, the Voivodeship Plan designates border areas with specific principles. Also, guidelines and projects are formulated concerning the extension of the street network or public transport connections (Urząd Marszałkowski Województwa Lubuskiego).

Even if the definition and contents in the topic of services of general interest differ, the underlying basic ideas in both planning systems are similar, because the concentration of facilities at certain places and complementary considerations on the accessibility are common.

 

Benjamin Blaser, Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Kirsten Mangels, Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Karina Pallagst, Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Nino Pfundstein, Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau

 

References

Ausschuss für Raumordnung der Deutsch-Polnischen Regierungskommission für regionale und grenznahe Zusammenarbeit (Hrsg.): ‚Common Future Vision for the German-Polish Interaction Area – Vision 2030‘. https://www.kooperation-ohne-grenzen.de/de/zukunftskonzept/einfuehrung/ (Accessed 31 March 2023).

Bächtold, H.-G., Hoffmann-Bohner, K.-H. and Keller, P. (2012) ‚Über Grenzen denken. Grenzüberschreitende Fragen der Raumentwicklung Deutschland – Schweiz‘, Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung, Hannover.

Blatter, J. (2004) ‘From ‘spaces of place’ to ‘spaces of flows’? Territorial and functional governance in cross-border regions in Europe and North America’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 28, No. 3. pp.530–548.

Gemeinsame Landesplanung (GL) (2019) ‘Landesentwicklungsplan Hauptstadtregion Berlin-Brandenburg (LEP HR)’, Potsdam.

Jakubowski, A., Trykacz, K., Studzieniecki, T. and Skibiński, J. (2021) ‘Identifying cross-border functional areas: conceptual background and empirical findings from Polish borderlands’, European Planning Studies. pp.1–23.

Opilowska, E. (2021) ‘Determinants of cross- border cooperation in the Polish– German borderland’, in Opiłowska, E. and Sus, M. (eds.) ‘Poland and Germany in the European Union. The multi-dimensional dynamics of bilateral relations’, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY. pp.208–226.

Paasi, A. (2009) ‘The resurgence of the ‘Region’ and ‘Regional Identity’: theoretical perspectives and empirical observations on regional dynamics in Europe’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 35, S1. pp.121–146.

Regionale Planungsgemeinschaft (RPG) Oderland-Spree (2021) ‘Sachlicher Teilregionalplan „Regionale Raumstruktur und Grundfunktionale Schwerpunkte“’. Fürstenwalde/Spree.

Urząd Marszałkowski Województwa Lubuskiego w Zielonej Górze (2018) 'Plan zagospodarowania przestrzennego województwa lubuskiego’. Zielona Góra.

Communicative Borderlands: The Case of Vocational Training (Konstanze Jungbluth, Galyna Orlova, Nicole Richter, Dagna Zinkhahn Rhobodes (European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)), Leonie Micka, Claudia Polzin-Haumann (Saarland University)), 27/04/2023

For most people, the term “border” is likely to invoke one of three images: an abstract line drawn on a map; a long queue inching its way towards passport control; or – on the bleaker view – an impenetrable fence or wall. Reality, however, is much more complex and ambiguous. Borders may impose separation, but the underlying social reality remains one of mixture and cross-pollination – dynamics which, in the European context, are increasingly acknowledged and encouraged on the institutional level.

This is the broad context for the project “Linking Borderlands: Dynamics of Cross-Border Peripheries”, a joint effort of Saarland University and European University Viadrina together with RPTU Kaiserslautern and Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus. The sub-project in which we are involved, titled “Communicative Borderlands: Social Practice and Language in the Context of Vocational Training”, investigates cross-border training projects in two border regions, Saarland-Lorraine in the west, and Brandenburg-Lubusz Voivodeship in the east. These settings form a rich ground for social investigation, raising fascinating questions about the different communication strategies used by speakers in multilingual groups. How do the participants in these cross-border training programmes experience their mutual interactions? How do they overcome the challenges of asymmetric language skills in order to achieve a common result?

^{Figure 1: Rescue Team training. Source: here}

Institutional efforts to promote the neighbouring language

In both border regions, several institutional efforts have been set up by local authorities to promote multi- and plurilingualism, especially of the neighbouring language. These include the Frankreichstrategie (“France strategy”), the Stratégie Allemagne de la Lorraine (“Germany Strategy of Lorraine”) and the Mehrsprachigkeitskonzept (“Multilingualism concept”). To support the creation of a transnational space in the professional domain, various programmes have been set up for cross-border vocational orientation (e.g. Grenzen überwinden – Europa erleben – “Crossing Borders - Experiencing Europe”); cross-border internships (e.g. Fachstelle für grenzüberschreitende Ausbildung – “Agency for cross-border vocational training”) and concrete cross-border training (e.g. Grenzüberschreitende Berufsausbildung Saarland-Lothringen – “Saar-Lorraine Cross-border vocational training”). In addition, there are measures being taken in vocational training centres to promote vocational mobility in the common border area, for example the German-French automotive training branch at the vocational training centre in St. Ingbert).

However, it is well-known that top-down policies such as those above are not enough to create a transnational space. Therefore, we should study how the different participants engage with one another in practice, and what communicative strategies they use in order to actually establish the desired cooperation between themselves. In our research, we are conducting interviews with different actors in these cross-border educational initiatives, and taking a closer look at trainees' lived practice within multilingual conversation situations. In this context, we propose the term Co-Constructing Communicative Borderlands (CCCBL) to capture the particular communicative behaviours used by participants in such situations (e.g. switching between languages and mixing them) as well as their knowledge and experience of facts and details about the border region in which they are situated.

^{Figure 2: Co-constructing communicative borderlands: Together in one direction. Picture by Leonie Micka.}

Opportunities and challenges of cross-border vocational training

As a first step, we want to understand how the different actors experience cross-border vocational training. For this reason, we have been talking to different experts in order to get a broad overview of the topic. From the point of view of the local institutions, concrete cross-border training is seen as profitable for non-academic occupational groups, as it offers trainees the opportunity to improve their language skills and gain work experience in the neighbouring country. This qualifies them as multilingual professionals on the cross-border labour market (cf. B1, paragraph 28 and B2, paragraph 30). Cross-border internships also offer young people numerous opportunities. Here, too, the young people can use their existing language skills and broaden their intercultural horizons, which in many cases increases their motivation to learn the neighbouring language. Another significant opportunity offered by these programs is for the development of personal competence, since the young participants need to overcome their fears and become independent to a certain extent. As a positive consequence, in many cases their motivation increases to continue learning the neighbouring language and return to Germany or France in the future (cf. B3, paragraph 33). At the same time, there are challenges that face facilitators in both cross-border vocational training and cross-border internships. Organizational aspects such as the financing of training, bureaucratic aspects, as well as the issue of mobility, all play a decisive role (cf. B2, paragraph 30). Organizational hurdles also have to be overcome in the area of cross-border work placements, for example searching for suitable companies and spatially and financially suitable accommodations that are appropriate in terms of both location and financing (cf. B3, paragraph 35).

 

Crossing language boundaries through co-constructing strategies

A second step, in which our expertise in conversational analysis comes to the fore, is to investigate what communication in cross-border vocational training actually looks like. Here, we offer an example from the German-Polish border region. In July 2022, we made some fascinating observations during a cross-border training camp for young German and Polish rescue workers organised in Strausberg (Brandenburg). The training was undertaken in cooperation between the University of Zielona Góra, the Lubuskie Voivodeship Office, and the non-profit rescue service Märkisch-Oderland (Gemeinnützige Rettungsdienst Märkisch-Oderland), with the aim of laying the foundation for adequate language skills necessary for cross-border rescue. At one of the classes, the students had the task of preparing a poster presenting the rescue procedure in case of a diving accident involving a mixed German-Polish group. As the lesson went on, we reached a surprising realization: despite rudimentary language skills in the respective neighbouring language, the German and Polish trainees were constructing the interaction step by step, so that shared understanding was achieved collaboratively. Although this might seem obvious, it is a dimension of multilingual communication that researchers have not paid much attention to. We are used to thinking about language-learning as an individual process, where the learner conforms their use of speech to established rules, as explained by the teacher. But here, we saw that language learning was an interactional process.

Let’s look at this example in more detail. Here, Polish and German trainees are working out their communicative task together, namely searching for a technical word. In order to overcome communication difficulties, they co-construct utterance units during their interaction and involve different communication strategies that incorporate all the languages and language varieties present in the classroom:

^{Figure 3: Interaction during the cross-border training camp (Transcript).}

In the transcript above, the German trainee initiates a word-search, inviting the participants to find a corresponding technical term in Polish by turning this interactional practice into a collaborative achievement. The German trainee starts her utterance in German, switches to Polish and tries to read out a Polish word (line 2). She makes her attempt audible to all and starts with the first syllable of the adjective, which she first pronounces as prze and then corrects it into przy. By reading out, she invites the other interactants to support and correct her, making the word-search a shared task for all the trainees. However, she then breaks off and says irgendwat. In the next turn, her German fellow student asks what the term means in Polish (line 4). The Polish trainee picks up on his German classmate's attempt to pronounce the Polish term and begins his utterance in Polish, which his Polish colleague then completes: badania przedmiotowe (physical examination, lines 5 and 6). The Polish trainee takes over the turn and, by co-constructing the utterance, achieves an appropriate result. In line 9, the German trainee restates the question asked earlier by her fellow student in a Low German dialect (was heisst dat?, line 4) and translates it into Polish: co to znaczy? (what does that mean?). In the next turn the Polish trainee takes up this question, and formulates it more precisely: badania przedmiotowe, jak to przetłumaczyć? (physical examination, how do you translate that?). She thus completes and expands the contribution of her German fellow student. The Polish trainee reacts to this reconstruction by first trying to formulate his own answer in German: Wie kann ich das... (how can I…this). Then, he breaks off and begins the explanation in English (line 13). In line 19, however, he does recall the technical term in German, körperliche Untersuchung, which is then repeated by the German trainee. This confirmation concludes the construction of the technical term. The communicative task has been successfully solved through the interactive cooperation of all the interlocutors.

The example shows how the interactants collaboratively struggle to find a technical term to coordinate their reciprocal interaction. Several participants are involved in this interaction, achieving true intersubjectivity. Through jointly completed utterances, repetitions, translations, and reconstructions, the word-searching process culminates thanks to their joint effort. What is particularly interesting, for us, is that this collaborative achievement cannot be traced back to one particular utterance of any single participant. The elaborated meaning is the result of interactional work and several speaking turns, which build on each other and lead to the agreement on a shared meaning.                                            

Even more fascinating is the great potential for new hybrid forms to emerge through such intersubjective contexts. For the interactants, a multilingual classroom is akin to an experimental laboratory, where a community of practice emerges. By implementing different strategies to resolve issues of mutual comprehension, they establish new forms of communication. In the classroom as well as during their hands-on exercises, the students use special strategies built upon their respective language repertoires to communicate and successfully overcome the challenges of perfectly coordinated interaction. In order to overcome language boundaries, they spontaneously use different linguistic resources aiming to co-construct a leading meaning. The emergent and processual character of such co-construction offers a potential for innovative forms of communication which, once habituated, may even become a part of a new, “third” code.

As we have seen, cross-border vocational training is a fascinating setting in which to investigate creative strategies for overcoming language boundaries. The trainees spontaneously use linguistic resources drawn from their respective languages, aiming to co-construct a leading meaning. That said, both the German-French and the German-Polish border regions often still struggle with insufficient language skills and with low motivation among young people to learn the neighbouring language, resulting in weakly developed language repertoires that make cross-border interaction challenging. For this reason, research on interactive language learning remains crucial for the realisation of cross-border language policy initiatives.

 

Konstanze Jungbluth, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Viadrina Center B/Orders in Motion

Leonie Micka, Saarland University, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Galyna Orlova, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Viadrina Center B/Orders in Motion

Claudia Polzin-Haumann, Saarland University, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Nicole Richter, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Viadrina Center B/Orders in Motion

Dagna Zinkhahn Rhobodes, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Viadrina Center B/Orders in Motion

 

References

BBZ St. Ingbert (2016): Deutsch-französischer Ausbildungszweig Automobil, available online: https://wp.bbz-igb.de/deutsch-franzoesischer-ausbildungszweig-automobil/ (access: 12/01/2023).

Bildungsklick (2022): Mehrsprachigkeitskonzept in Brandenburg, available online: https://bildungsklick.de/bildung-und-gesellschaft/detail/vorstellung-von-mehrsprachigkeitskonzept-in-brandenburg (access: 30/10/2022).

Brouwer, C.E. (2003): „Word searches in NNS-NS interaction: Opportunities for language learning?”, in: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 87 No. 4, pp. 534-545.

Bundesagentur für Arbeit (2022) : Grenzüberschreitende Ausbildung Saarland-Lothringen, available online: https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/vor-ort/saarland/ausbildungsvermittlung/apt-dt (access: 28/03/2022).

Conseil régional de Lorraine (2015): Stratégie Allemagne de la Lorraine. Rapport final. Synthèse et propositions juin 2015, available online: https://metz.fr/pages/conseil_municipal/seances/cm151029/doc/5_d1445930773387.pdf (access: 30/10/2022).

Dausendschön-Gay, U. / Gülich, E. / Krafft, U. (Eds.) (2015): Ko-Konstruktionen in der Interaktion. Die gemeinsame Arbeit an Äußerungen und anderen sozialen Ereignissen. Transcript, Bielefeld.

Erfurt, J. (2003): „„Multisprech“: Migration und Hybridisierung und ihre Folgen für die Sprachwissenschaft“, in: Erfurt, J. (Ed.): „Multisprech“: Hybridität, Variation, Identität. Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie, Bd. 65. Red. Obst, Osnabrück, pp. 5-34.

Eskildsen, S. W. / Markee, N. (2018): „L2 talk as social accomplishment”, in: Alonso, R.A. (Ed.) : Speaking in a Second Language. AILA Applied Linguistics Series 17. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp. 69-103.

Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen (2022): Grenzen überwinden, Europa erleben – Surmonter les frontières, vivre l’Europe, available online: https://www.eao-otzenhausen.de/bildungsprogramme/veranstaltung/grenzen-ueberwinden-europa-erleben-surmonter-les-frontieres-vivre-leurope/ (access: 12/01/2023).

Gugenberger, E. (2005): „Der dritte Raum in der Sprache. Sprachliche Hybridisierung am Beispiel galicischer Migrant/inn/en in Buenos Aires“, in: Cichon, P. et al. (Eds.): Entgrenzungen. Für eine Soziologie der Kommunikation. Praesens, Wien, pp. 354-376.

Hinnenkamp, V. (2002): „Deutsch-türkisches Code-Mixing und Fragen der Hybridität“, in: Hartung, W. / Shethar, A. (Eds.), Kulturen und ihre Sprachen. Die Wahrnehmung anders Sprechender und ihr Selbstverständnis. Trafo, Berlin, pp. 123-143.

Jungbluth, K. (2016): „Co-Constructions in Multilingual Settings”, in: Fernández-Villanueva, M. / Jungbluth, K. (Eds.): Beyond Language Boundaries. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, pp. 137-152.

Lüdi, G. (2015): „Methodologische Überlegungen zur Analyse der Sprachwahl als Ko-Konstruktion“, in: Dausendschön-Gay, U. / Gülich, E. / Krafft. U. (Eds.): Ko-Konstruktionen in der Interaktion. Die gemeinsame Arbeit an Äußerungen und anderen sozialen Ereignissen. Transcript, Bielefeld, pp. 97-110.

Polzin-Haumann, C. / Reissner, C. (2018): „Language and Language Policies in Saarland and Lorraine: Towards the Creation of a Transnational Space?”, in: Jańczak, B. A. (Ed.): Language Contact and Language Policies Across Borders: Construction and Deconstruction of Transnational and Transcultural Spaces, Berlin, Logos Verlag, pp. 45-55.

Staatskanzlei Saarland (2014): Eckpunkte einer Frankreichstrategie für das Saarland, available online: https://www.saarland.de/stk/EN/service/publikationen/Frankreichstrategie.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1 (access: 30/10/2022).

Verbundausbildung Untere Saar e.V. (2023): Fachstelle für grenzüberschreitende Ausbildung, available online: https://vausnet.de/projekte/fachstelle-fuer-grenzueberschreitende-ausbildung-faga/ (access: 12/01/2023).

Wille, C. / Leutloff-Grandits, C. / Bretschneider, F. / Grimm-Hamen, S. / Wagner, H. (Eds.), (forthcoming): Border Complexities and Logics of Dis/Order. Nomos, Baden-Baden

Zinkhahn Rhobodes, D. (2016): Sprechen entlang der Oder: Der Charakter der sprachlichen Grenzen am Beispiel der deutsch-polnischen Sprachroutine. Peter Lang Edition, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien.

Hybrid Borderlands: Bordertexturing Films (Tobias Schank, Saarland University), 20/04/2023

Stepping into a cinema, I enter the sanctum. It is a special place, these days in particular. The dark, barely lit interior. Silhouettes of my unknown wayfaring companions. The cozy seat. The sound of plastic bags of overprized snacks being ripped open enthusiastically, cold beverages cheerfully slurped with blatant disregard to conventional, daylight etiquette. The last gasps of excited, frantic conversations about the outside world, this already distant, alien land, as I accustom myself to my new surroundings, preparing myself to be drawn into the realm of make-believe. Coughs. Sneezes. A coarse and smokey laugh. Reminders. Final gasps. Phones retrieved from pockets, put to silence for a short break from reality, the dying light of their screens the last embers of the all-consuming, maddening purgatory outside. Pirouetting will-o-whisps travelling through the ever-darkening night. They fade. Now inside. A new space. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream?

As the sights and sounds of movie trailers – appetizers for the dreams to come – rain on me like the droplets of a refreshing summer shower, I inhale, and my heartbeat steadies. I close my eyes. A drumroll. Fanfares. The familiar flourish of the factory. Welcome to America. Silence. I exhale. I open my eyes. Darkness.

 

Between the Marshes and Saarbrücken

The sounds of crickets chirping. Mosquitoes buzzing. The trilling of a toad. The sight of lush trees overgrown with Spanish moss. Meandering rivers. I’m in the marshes. They have already swallowed me whole. I have crossed the threshold. I am no longer here, nor am I really there. I am somewhere in between – somewhere between the American South and Saarbrücken, somewhere between the screen and the edge of my seat in the cinema. I am in a borderspace (cf. Williams 2021, 22), somewhere between fiction and reality. A third space. Geographically disparate. But palpably adjacent, near, connected, converged, hybridized. I traverse. I cross. I move between the here and there.

 

Figure 1: 50/50 transparency hybrid-collage of Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture and official movie poster to WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Olivia Newman, 2022). Source: Tobias Schank		Figure 2: 50/50 transparency hybrid-collage of the book cover “Bordertextures: A Complexity Approach to Cultural Border Studies” and movie poster to DREI FARBEN SCHWARZ (Christian and Dorlie Fuchs, 1997). Source: Tobias Schank

 

Studying Border Films

I study border films. Whether this means films about borders, films funded or made by people who come from border regions, films made to divest borders or films made to reinforce them (cf. Hanna & Sheehan 2019, 1) – or whether it means all of these things to varying degrees – is irrelevant for now. Suffice it to say that in compiling the body of material for my research, the representations of borders and the experiences of the people who live near them are key to my investigations. Specifically, I study border films that represent and make re-experienceable borderland experiences of the SaarLorLux region and the German-Polish borderlands, inquiring if the shared historical touchstones of industrial boom and bust in both regions have produced aesthetical and narrative codes that may or may not be at once unique to their regional context and universal to borderland representations in general.

 

The specificities of film

Film is a funny medium. Firmly engrained in popular culture, the ubiquity of film in our daily lives is undeniable, albeit declining in significance. However, it seems this ubiquity has not resulted in the wholesale appreciation of film as a valid object of study. Rather, conventional wisdom still seems to dictate that the study of film was a somewhat trivial exercise, especially when compared to the endless amounts of allegedly reliable, verifiable, irrefutable data, facts and figures provided by the ‘hard sciences.’ And yes, film is elusive. Its contents and how they affect people are not exactly quantifiable, at least not reliably. It is highly subjective. Who experiences any given film, and when and under which condition they do so, makes a huge difference. More to the point, who studies the meaning(s) of a film and which scholarly angle they choose to pursue makes a huge difference (admittedly, this should be true to any form of research). And it matters, contrary to some scholarly efforts that intend to hide academic positionality in film studies behind a rigid grid of categories and quantifiable data (cf. Wiedemann 2017, 479). So, why study it? What insights can we possibly draw from a medium that refuses to provide verifiable answers?

 

Why film?

Perhaps that it was never about providing uncontestable answers, but about asking ‘the right’ questions – the right ones being those that challenge us to think, grow, expand. Are not those films that keep us wondering and pondering the ones that we remember? The films that will not let us go. The films that dodge every single one of our attempts to make sense of them. Are not they the ones that stick? The films that test us with complexity? The films that transgress boundaries and that invite us to come along for the ride – or stay at the sidelines and challenge that which challenges us. Are not they what we would label the best kind of films (cf. Naficy 2001, 32)?

I study border films. I study films that interrogate the border. I study films that question the legitimacy, the efficacy, the purpose, the power, the oppressiveness, the permeability, the agency, the impact of borders. I study films that ask themselves what life is like in the peripheries of nation states, in borderlands, in order to inspire us to ask ourselves. I study films that “[carve] out general conceptions on borders, border crossers, and territorial identities” (Nyman 2011, 374). I study films that wonder how people experience borders and borderlands in order to prompt us to wonder, too.

 

Texturing Border Experiences

I study films about coal mining in the SaarLorLux region. There are so many of them (for a first impression, see here). One in particular sticks out to me. A documentary from the 1990s (a form of the social sciences, I wonder?). It features three main protagonists, and parts of their families. It gives them a platform to tell their stories. Three voices. Individually.

One tells of his migration from Italy to Wallonia, how he witnessed the collapse of the industry, how he is trying to preserve the cultural heritage within a society in disrepair. Another tells of his glory days as a coal miner in Lorraine, how he was forced to change careers as the industry went bust, how he is doing his best to provide new professional avenues to young people in his office as mayor of his hometown. Another tells of his current occupation as a coal miner in Saarland, how he is experiencing the unremitting rationalizations of his employer, how he is considering to either relocate or change careers to make ends meet.

 

THREE COLORS BLACK

The three never meet. Except they do, as I, experiencing the film, connect their respective narrative threads and weave them together in a tapestry that transcends borders and enmeshes their experiences. Subsumed under a fitting title, I now wonder not what was the fate of one particular miner, a synecdoche of one industry specific to one town or nation, perhaps. But rather I wonder how their life stories progressed separately from one another and yet were no doubt inextricably tied by the one resource that has shaped and linked the identities of people from Wallonia, Lorraine, and the Saar region for centuries – crucially, often in disregard of, while still institutionally embedded within, the hegemony of nation states and national policies. In other words, the film encourages me to join it in creating a texture that connects individual experiences across borders, while revealing and retaining the significance of context that may be idiosyncratic to one specific experience. Together, the film and I engage in bordertexturing (cf. AG Bordertexturen 2018).

 

A range of borders

I am in-between again. Somewhere between the humid, hot swamps of Louisiana and the air-conditioned comforts of my seat in a downtown Saarbrücken cinema. With the protagonist, I experience the borders between urban and rural life, the borders between black and white, between male and female, between a nostalgic vision of late 1960s America and today. Much to my dismay, the film upholds and invariably fortifies many of those dualistic conceptualizations. And yet I wonder how they erode a little more each time I object to this form of representation. With the protagonist, I am moved by her experience of sexual violence and by her determination to fight back. For but a moment I leave the boundaries of my own body, my own physical Self, to become a part of her and feel, sense, struggle, survive, overcome with her. This is not a film about borders. And yet I am crossing so many of them.

 

Facilitating bordertexturing

I study border films. I study films that interrogate the border. I study films that wonder how people experience borders and borderlands in order to prompt us to wonder, too. I study films that contextualize borders and borderland experiences. I study films that reveal the many dimensions of borders, the textures of borderlands. I contextualize border films. I facilitate. I help them speak to one another and therefore speak to us. I see their many dimensions and invite others to see them, too. I appreciate their textuality. I practice bordertexturing.

 

Tobias Schank, Saarland University, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

 

References

AG Bordertexturen. “Bordertexturen als Transdisziplinärer Ansatz zur Untersuchung von Grenzen: Ein Werkstattbericht.” Berliner Debatte Initial 29.1 (2018): 73-83. Print.

Hanna, Monica, and Rebecca A. Sheehan. “Moving Images: Contesting Global Borders in the Digital Age.” Border Cinema: Reimagining Identity through Aesthetics. Ed Monica Hanna and Rebecca A. Sheehan. New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey and London: Rutgers UP, 2019. 1-18. Print.

Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print.

Nyman, Jopi. “The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 26.3 (2011): 373-4, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2011.675718.

Williams, James S. “Queering the migrant: Being beyond borders.” Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema. Ed. James S. Williams. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. 3-29, DOI: 10.4324/9780429264245.

Wiedemann, Thomas. “Diskursanalyse und Filmanalyse.” Qualitative Medienforschung: Ein Handbuch. 2nd edition. Ed. Lothar Mikos and Claudia Wegener. Konstanz and Munich: UVK, 2017. 477-483. Print.

Energy Borderlands: Examples of interlinked areas along German borders (Kamil Bembnista, Ludger Gailing, (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg), Alexandra Lampke, Florian Weber (Saarland University)) 13/04/2023

Energy Borderlands

In recent years, global change has developed as a central topic with far-reaching political, economic, and cultural implications, in addition to ecological effects. One important consequence of these effects has been upheavals in energy production and energy supply, linked to a fundamental transition in favor of low-carbon energy. However, since this energy transition takes different paths in different countries, and the weighting of energy sources also differs, we can speak of several energy transitions with different energy sources coming to the fore in the energy mix. In Germany, for example, electricity generated from renewable sources plays an important role (German Environment Agency, 2022; Federal Network Agency, 2022), whereas the focus in French electricity generation is on nuclear power (Bruns and Deshaies, 2018).

In the clash of these different (mostly national) concepts, negotiation processes arise, and these can become conflictual. They tend to appear in magnified form along administrative borders, in the so-called borderlands, for example in the conflict between nuclear power and wind power on the borders between Germany, Luxembourg, and France, or between renewably sourced energy and coal on the borders between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. However, there are forms of energy that give rise to less conflict, and in this context projects have arisen that involve cooperation across administrative borders. Thus border regions can grow not only into so-called conflict zones (in general e.g. Hess, 2018; Weber, 2021), but also into interlinked areas within which cooperation takes place across borders as part of the promotion of a specific form of energy. Hence the classification system we are working with and which defines conflict zones and interlinked areas must be seen as fluid. The concept of energy borderlands (Biemann and Weber, 2020) may also show traits of these different forms of classification and is, therefore, inherently both complex and diverse.

Focusing on interlinked areas, this blog post will on the whole provide positive and productive examples of negotiation processes. As case studies, the hydrogen initiative Grande Region Hydrogen in the Germany-Luxembourg-France border region as well as the project of the planned climate neutral twin city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec in the Germany-Poland border region will be presented. As a basis for what follows, we refer to interviews conducted within the joint project Linking Borderlands (funding code: 01UC2104), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

 

Case study “West”: Grande Region Hydrogen initiative

Despite all the differences between Germany, Luxembourg, and France with regard to dominant forms of energy, hydrogen has in recent times been increasingly treated as a “common denominator” of the Greater Region (W-IP_12_LUX_nat). In terms of this common denominator, the Grande Region Hydrogen initiative was launched in August 2021. This initiative takes the form of a trinational, cross-border European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) aimed at developing and supporting a hydrogen network in the Greater Region of SaarLorLux – Saarland (Germany), Lorraine (Grand-Est, France), and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Grande Region Hydrogen, 2021a). Its objective is to act as a forum for discussion and exchange on the way to a functioning hydrogen economy and to bring together projects around the production, transport, and consumption of hydrogen as an energy carrier in the SaarLorLux border region (Grande Region Hydrogen, 2021a). The initiative currently includes such projects as the cross-border hydrogen pipeline mosaHYc (Moselle-Saar-Hydrogen-Conversion), led by project partners from Germany, France, and Luxembourg, which is converting existing gas pipelines into hydrogen pipelines (Grande Region Hydrogen, 2021b), as well as projects around various hydrogen producing and consuming sites, and additional pipeline construction connecting resident hydrogen producers and consumers more closely (see Figure 1).

^{Figure 1: Joint cross-border hydrogen initiative. Source: creos}

Especially in the regional context and against the background of the German energy transition (Energiewende), the development of a hydrogen network plays an important role (W-IP_1_DE_nat; W-IP_7_GR). Hydrogen as an energy carrier is an essential resource for the strong industrial sectors in Saarland (and Lorraine) that depend on a reliable and consistent energy flow and that can no longer rely on an assured supply of gas (W-IP_7_GR). For the Saarland steel industry in particular, this marks a forward-looking decarbonization path in the transition from so-called “old” to “new” energies (W-IP_3_DE_nat; W-IP_15_DE-FR_nat). In order to meet the high demand of these energy-intensive regional industries, the production of hydrogen on both sides of the border and an interlinked transport system are of crucial importance. The Grande Region Hydrogen initiative enables this development, creating an interlinked hydrogen supply across the SaarLorLux border region.

However, this positive development has potential downsides. The initiative’s explicit objective is to produce green hydrogen, i.e. hydrogen obtained by electrolysis using electricity from renewable sources (W-IP_1_DE_nat). But the German side is concerned that red hydrogen – i.e. hydrogen produced by electrolysis using electricity from nuclear power – could also become economically promising (W-IP_9_DE_reg; Saarbrücker Zeitung, 24.11.2022). One reason for this concern is the French commitment to nuclear power, which – against the background of current developments in world politics – may well gain still more momentum. For example, the new EU Taxonomy Regulation, aiming to channel capital flows into environmentally sustainable, so-called ‘green’ economic activities, also classifies nuclear power as ‘green.’ This could, to German and Luxembourgian displeasure, open the door to a stronger French nuclear sector and the potential production of hydrogen using nuclear power (W-IP_3_DE_nat; W-IP_4_DE_lok; W-IP_10_LUX_lok; W-IP_11_LUX_lok). It remains to be seen, therefore, whether the current ‘common denominator’ of hydrogen and the resulting interlinked area may also produce a new conflict zone.

 

Case Study “East”: German-Polish twin city Görlitz-Zgorzelec

Climate change poses a threat across all national borders, requiring cross-border efforts, and the Polish-German borderland illustrates the pressing need to overcome political disparities and conflicts by acting cooperatively to ensure future energy production (E-IP_1_PL_reg; E-IP_9_PL_reg; E-IP_7_DE_reg). Accordingly, projects such as that of the German-Polish twin city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec, which aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2030, have been launched to create energy-related cross-border alliances. Inspired by the European Commission’s Green Deal, the mayors of the two cities in the heart of a historic coal and industrial belt, have signed a declaration of intent with regard to the construction of a joint biomass heating plant in Zgorzelec to supply both sides of the border region through a newly established joint energy network (Veolia, 2021).

Based on biomass as a renewable energy source, the operation will make electricity production independent of fossil fuels and is expected to save 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. But it will initially also rely on gas, as Zgorzelec must first convert its power plant from coal to natural gas, pending later conversion to biomass. The first step, however, is to ensure the interconnection of all district heating areas of the twin city, with several feed-in points. This will require, among other things, the construction of a 2.5km pipeline under the Neisse River between Görlitz and Zgorzelec. Subsequently, the existing generation plants of Görlitz and Zgorzelec will be converted to 100% renewable energies. This will entail the integration of surplus heat from the Görlitz wastewater treatment plant. In order to achieve this goal, EU-funding will be necessary (E-IP_7_DE_reg). Submitted by Stadtwerke Görlitz (Görlitz Municipal Utilities), the project has landed on a short list for EU funding and is now eligible to apply for the EU Cross-Border Renewable Energy program (CB RES).

A hydrogen network spanning the German-Polish border is also currently under discussion. While the Lusatia Hydrogen Network acts as a kind of role model for the Polish side (E-IP_2_PL_reg), Polish decision-makers from the Wielkopolska Region are calling for energy solidarity and seeking collaboration with the State of Brandenburg. Especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, cross-border cooperation has aimed not only at decarbonizing the energy sector, but also at decreasing European dependence on Russian energy imports (E-IP_2_PL_reg). In this respect, a common awareness of vulnerability has stimulated European-wide energy solidarity. This is especially evident in European borderlands, where European frameworks, nation-state policies, and regional and local administrative measures can converge to create cross-border energy projects.

 

Conclusion: Energy borderlands in transition

The two cases cited in this blog post on energy borderlands show that cross-border issues in the energy sector need not be negotiated in a conflictual way, as so often seems the case, but can also generate positive ideas and solutions. Despite conflicting national energy policies and different concepts of energy transition, local, and regional interconnections can still be established across borders. Introduced in this blog post, the productive examples of the Grande Region Hydrogen network on the German-French-Luxembourgian border, and the planned climate-neutral twin city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec on the German-Polish border, can both be classified in a theoretical-conceptual systematization as ‘interlinked areas’ (in general Crossey and Weber, 2021; Schneider-Sliwa, 2018).

The examples presented show that cross-border cooperation – in this case in the energy sector – is often successful when it can build on already established cross-border structures, be they of a technical or administrative nature. Cooperation is possible because of similarities on both sides of the border (Wille et al., 2016). However, while cooperation in the western border region seems to be proceeding more smoothly, the eastern border region has to overcome a greater number of challenges, mainly in the area of pipeline construction: these already exist on the French-German border. How cooperation in these (and other) border regions will develop – not only against the backdrop of different national energy policies, mixes, and practices, but also in the course of the current upheavals in energy supply – remains to be seen.  

Since February 2022 at the latest, with the onset of the Ukraine crisis, the question of a secure energy supply independent of Russia has played a dominant role in the energy sector, as well as in social and political discussions. The call for energy solidarity is growing louder and the need for cross-border energy exchange higher. The extent to which this issue can be addressed on a pan-European basis may well be determined in border regions. Will interlinked areas emerge? Will conflict zones take shape? Border regions remain at the forefront of research in this area.  

 

Kamil Bembnista, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg

Alexandra Lampke, Saarland University, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Ludger Gailing, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg

Florian Weber, Saarland University, UniGR-Center for Border Studies

 

References

Biemann, J. and Weber, F. (2020) ‘Energy Borderlands – eine Analyse medialer Aushandlungsprozesse um das Kernkraftwerk Cattenom in der Großregion SaarLorLux’, in Weber, F. et al. (eds.), Geographien der Grenzen. Räume – Ordnungen – Verflechtungen, Springer VS, Wiesbaden, pp.73–94.

Bruns, A. and Deshaies, M. (2018) ‘Territorial Science Echo: Heterogene Energielandschaften in einer Grenzregion – Raum, Gesellschaft und Energie in der Großregion / Paysages énergétiques hétérogènes en région frontalière – espace, société et énergie dans la Grande Région’. http://www.uni-gr.eu/sites/tst-uni-gr.univ-lorraine.fr/files/users/unigr-cbs_working_papers_vol.4_defr_aktuell.pdf (Accessed 7 February 2022).

Crossey, N. and Weber, F. (2021) Handlungsempfehlungen zur weiteren Gestaltung der grenzüberschreitenden Kooperation im deutsch-französischen Verflechtungsraum | Recommandations d‘action pour les orientations futures de la coopération transfrontalière dans le bassin de vie franco-allemand. UniGR-CBS Policy Paper 4, https://doi.org/10.25353/ubtr-xxxx-1310-2b66/.

Federal Network Agency (2022) ‘The electricity market in the third quarter of 2022: Smaller share of electricity from conventional energy sources’. https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/209146 (Accessed 10 November 2022).

German Environment Agency (2022) ‘Renewable energies in figures’. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/renewable-energies/renewable-energies-in-figures (Accessed 10 November 2022).

Grande Region Hydrogen (2021a) ‘Grande Region Hydrogen: An initiative that aims to develop a hydrogen ecosystem’. https://grande-region-hydrogen.eu/en/initiative-and-vision/ (Accessed 22 December 2021).

Grande Region Hydrogen (2021b) ‘MosaHYc: Creos/Encevo/GRTgaz’. https://grande-region-hydrogen.eu/en/projects/mosahyc/ (Accessed 27 January 2023).

Hess, S. (2018) ‘Border as Conflict Zone. Critical Approaches on the Border and Migration Nexus’, in Bachmann-Medick, D. and Kugele, J. (eds.), Migration. Changing Concepts, Critical Approaches, de Gruyter, Berlin, Boston, pp.83–99.

Saarbrücker Zeitung (24.11.2022) ‘Saar-Ministerpräsidentin spricht in Paris über Energiepolitik’, Saarbrücker Zeitung, p.11.

Schneider-Sliwa, R. (2018) ‘Verflechtungsraum Basel. Von der Regio-Idee zur Trinationalen Metropole Oberrhein’, in Heintel, M. et al. (eds.), Grenzen. Theoretische, konzeptionelle und praxisbezogene Fragestellungen zu Grenzen und deren Überschreitungen, Springer VS, Wiesbaden, pp.205–235.

Veolia (2021) ‘Klimaschutz kennt keine Grenzen’. https://www.veolutions.veolia.de/de/klimaschutz-kennt-keine-grenzen (Accessed 10 November 2022).

Weber, F. (2021) ‘Les pays de l‘entre-deux: Übergangsräume – Grenzregionen – Konfliktzonen. Hybride Grenzlandschaften der Großregion SaarLorLux’, in Burggraaff, P. et al. (eds.), Les pays de l‘entre deux. Übergangsräume – Grenzregionen – Konfliktzonen, Selbstverlag, Bonn, pp.115–130.

Wille, C., Reckinger, R., Kmec, S. and Hesse, M. (eds.), (2016) Spaces and Identities in Border Regions. Politics – Media – Subjects, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.

Policy Borderlands: Political science perspectives on borders and cross-border cooperation (Stefanie Thurm, Julia Wagner (Saarland University), Peter Ulrich (Potsdam University)) 06/04/2023

What functions do borders fulfill from a political science perspective? What concepts does political science offer to analyze cross-border cooperation? In this blog post, we provide political science perspectives on borders and cross-border cooperation.

Borders and nation-states

Borders and cross-border cooperation have not been on the agenda of political science research for a long time. Yet borders form a central element of statehood. According to a classic definition by Georg Jellinek, states are defined by three elements: first, by a territory defined by borders; second, by a people; and third, by state power (Jellinek 1905). The latter, state power, is exercised by a number of institutions, including the administration, the head of state, and the government. While the government can change (and regularly does in democratic states), state boundaries remain the same. When we speak of states today, we often mean nation-states. However, state and nation are not the same things; they can exist quite independently. A nation is a group of people united by a common identity, based on a shared historical tradition and cultural elements, and essentially living in an identifiable geographic unit (Robertson 2002). If these elements coincide with the definitional characteristics of a state (especially state borders), then it is an ideal-type nation-state.

So why are borders important and what functions do they fulfill for nation-states? From a political science perspective, borders have a barrier function: they separate different administrative areas. However, borders also act as linguistic, psychological, and cultural barriers (Böhm 2019). They demarcate national identities and support the social construction of a "natural" unity of people within a national territory (Anderson 1996).

Different theoretical lenses open up different views of the function of borders: In the realist theoretical tradition, borders are of great importance. They serve as a barrier against external threats and as a central element of sovereignty. The liberal tradition assigns great importance to cooperation and interdependence, with borders serving not only as bridges between state actors but also with non-state actors. According to the postmodern paradigm, borders partly lose their barrier function and the activities of transnational actors as well as the shift of state functions to the subnational and international level increase (Böhm 2019, Kolossov 2015).

(1) Analyzing cross-border cooperation through the multilevel governance prism

With the intensification of European integration, people, goods, services, and capital are no longer constrained by state borders. State power has been partially shifted to the European level, while at the same time subnational actors have been given more powers.
 

^{With the establishment of the Schengen area, borders in the EU have partially lost their barrier function: According to the Schengen idea, EU citizens can cross borders freely without border controls. Source: Christian Wille.}

The political science concept of multilevel governance takes into account and analyzes this multilevel interconnectedness of political structures: it is not a single government that is responsible for policy, but different actors simultaneously at different, interconnected levels. They interact and are involved in opinion formation, decision making, and adjudication. The types of actors vary from public actors to private/business and civil society actors.

Hooghe and Marks (2012) distinguish between two types of multilevel governance:

Type I corresponds to the institutional structure of federalism: as in a Russian doll, each citizen is located in a nested system of different levels (Hooghe & Marks 2012, 17). Each level is charged with a range of responsibilities and has only a single membership in the higher level; for example, a city cannot be a member of two states at the same time. Finally, Type I systems have a system-wide structure, typically based on an elected legislature, an executive, and a judiciary.

Type II, on the other hand, is organized on a task-specific basis and often deals with a specific topic. A good example of this governance form is a special-purpose association dealing with waste management or environmental protection. Overlapping memberships are possible, so stakeholders (e.g., municipalities) can be part of multiple Type II structures. Moreover, they are designed to be flexible and can be easily dissolved when they are no longer needed, unlike Type I structures, which tend to be much more permanent (Hooghe & Marks 2012).

To what extent can border regions now be analyzed using the multi-level governance approach? With the establishment of the Euroregions, institutional structures have emerged that are very much in line with the concept of multi-level governance. One example is the Interreg program, through which the EU provides funding for cross-border initiatives whose implementation is in the hands of public actors (at the local, regional as well as national level), as well as private and civil society actors.
 

_{Local and regional authorities come together in Euroregions alongside European borders to cooperate on joint issues. The involvement of different political levels and private actors presents opportunities but also challenges which need to be addressed. Source: Peter Ulrich.}

However, a classification of the cross-border cooperation of the Euroregions into the typology of multi-level governance is ambiguous. In favor of a classification of Euroregions as type II (Perkmann 2007) is the fact that their main objective of cross-border cooperation is task-specific. In addition, an actor may have memberships at a higher level, which overlap. For example, some countries are part of several Euroregions (Klatt & Herrmann 2011). Nevertheless, many characteristics of Type I can also be found: according to Blatter (2001), Euroregions are organized according to a traditional territorial logic with more or less fixed borders. Euroregions deal with a wide range of issues, from social to cultural policy to environmental protection. Against this background, Euroregions can be seen as an additional layer in the EU's multi-level governance architecture.

(2) Analyzing cross-border cooperation through the cross-border governance prism

In contrast to multi-level governance, which focuses on different levels of competence, the concept of cross-border governance is more concerned with the context of cross-border cooperation and its specific challenges and circumstances f.e. in cross-border region, metropolitan areas, twin cities or towns (Jańczak 2011; Pikner 2008; Ulrich & Scott 2021). In particular, cross-border contexts are not only characterized by vertical (supranational, national, and subnational) and horizontal dimensions as in multilevel governance, but also exhibit a diagonal dimension of governance (Ulrich & Scott 2021). A challenge for cross-border governance is posed by different responsibilities for a given policy across borders. This can complicate cross-border forms of cooperation when different levels feel responsible or when it is not clear who is responsible, or when national actors want to cooperate with the neighboring national level and not with the regional level.  Thus, political science analysis of cross-border cooperation needs to consider the differences, opportunities and challenges that arise from specific territorial, political, institutional, socio-economic, socio-cultural and cultural characteristics across national borders.

 

Stefanie Thurm, Saarland University

Peter Ulrich, Potsdam University, Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION

Julia Wagner, Saarland University

 

References

Andersson, M. (1996). Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Blatter, J. K. (2001). Debordering the world of states: Towards a multi-level system in Europe and a multi-polity system in North America? Insights from border regions. European Journal of International Relations, 7(2), 175-209. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066101007002002

Böhm, H. (2019). Borders and cross-border cooperation in Europe from a perspective of political sciences. In Beck, J. (Ed.), Transdisciplinary Discourses on Cross-Border Cooperation in Europe (pp. 59-81). Brussels: Peter Lang.

Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2012). Types of multi-level governance. In Enderlein, H., Walti, S., & Zürn, M. (Eds.), Handbook on multi-level governance (pp. 17-31). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Jańczak, J. (2011). Cross-border Governance in Central European Border Twin Towns. Between De-bordering and Re-bordering. In Jańczak, J. (Ed.), De-bordering, Re-bordering and Symbols on the European Boundaries (pp. 37–52). Berlin: Logos Verlag.

Jellinek, G. (1905). Allgemeine Staatslehre. Berlin. In Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/allgemeinestaat00jellgoog/page/n22/mode/2up. (Accessed on 6 March 2023).

Klatt, M., & Herrmann, H. (2011). Half empty or half full? Over 30 years of regional cross-border cooperation within the EU: Experiences at the Dutch–German and Danish–German border. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 26(1), 65-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2011.590289 https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2011.590289

Kolossov, V. (2015). Theoretical approaches to Border Studies. In Sevastianov, S. V., Laine, J. P., & Kireev, A. A. (Eds.), Introduction to Border Studies (pp. 33-61). Vladivostok: Far Eastern University.

Perkmann, M. (2007). Policy entrepreneurship and multilevel governance: a comparative study of European cross-border regions. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 25(6), 861-879. https://doi.org/10.1068/c60m

Pikner, T. (2008). Reorganizing Cross-Border Governance Capacity. The Case of the Helsinki–Tallinn Euregio. European Urban and Regional Studies, 15(3), 211–227.

Robertson, D. (2002). A Dictionary of Modern Politics. London: Europa Publications.

Ulrich, P., & Scott, J. W. (2021). Cross-Border Governance in europäischer Regionalkooperation. In Gerst, D., Klessmann, M., & Krämer, H. (Eds.), Grenzforschung: Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium (pp. 156-174). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Boundaries in the city – Urban Borderlands around the Ourcq Canal in Paris (Corinna Jürgens, Saarland University), 16/03/2023

Paris – this name often evokes the association ‘city of love’ or the image of a fashion metropolis. Travel guides praise the Eiffel tower and the Louvre as must-see highlights on a city trip. Images of a dazzling metropolis with delicacies like Pains au chocolat also shape the perception of Paris. In contrast, the Parisian suburbs, the banlieues, are rarely associated with the image of Paris.

Paris and its banlieues – an ambivalent relationship

Nevertheless, significantly more people live in the greater area of Paris than within the official administrative border of ‘Paris’, and a total of 12.2 million people call the Île-de-France region home. With 2.1 million people, only a fraction of those who are regularly commuting to Paris for either work or leisure are living inside the official city limits (75th Département). Fewer and fewer people can afford the high costs of living. While Paris is one of the most expensive cities in the world, the costs of living in the municipalities of the Département Seine-Saint-Denis northeast of Paris are on average significantly cheaper (see Fig. 1).

^{Fig. 1: Paris and its banlieues in Seine-Saint-Denis. Source: Own illustration, Geodata © OpenStreetMap and Contributors, CC-BY-SA}

However, the north-eastern suburbs of Paris are sometimes associated with a negative image: they are presumed to be precarious and unsafe, have the second highest unemployment rates in France, and Seine-Saint-Denis represents one of the poorest French Départements (Insee 2022, n. p.; Insee 2023, n. p.; Weber 2016, p. 94). The contrast with the inner city of Paris is thus great, and the image of the banlieues may dissuade people from relocating to the suburbs. In recent years, however, a transformation can be observed, leading to visible and invisible changes and reshaping everyday life in these districts. Among other things, the area around the Ourcq Canal is becoming increasingly attractive (see Fig. 2).

Based on these structural and social changes, this blogpost discusses the effects of urban bordering processes within the Urban Borderlands of the Greater Parisian periphery.
 

_{Fig. 2: Modern Apartments at the Canal de l'Ourcq in Pantin. Source: Corinna Jürgens 2022}

The transformation of the Plaine de l‘Ourcq

The urban transformation started in the inner ring around Paris, e.g., in municipalities like Pantin. In this city bordering the north-east of Paris, the transformation can be exemplified by the renovation of the old flour mills located by the Canal de l’Ourcq. These buildings, remnants of the industrial past of the canal’s bank, serve as new office spaces for the bank BNP Paribas since 2009 (Albecker 2015, n. p.). The Ourcq Canal plays a central role in these development projects: in addition to the establishment of prestigious companies in the last two decades, the creation of new living space for 25,000 people is planned in the area of the Plaine de l’Ourcq until 2030 in extensive urban development projects. On the one hand, this is a reaction to the housing shortage in the metropolitan region. On the other hand, these projects serve the creation of new office, retail, and public spaces as well as locations for cultural activities are established in a total area of 200 ha (Est Ensemble 2018, p. 2). Thus, new land uses are being created in five municipalities – from Pantin to Bondy – which contribute to a further heterogenization of the banlieues.

Parisian Urban Borderlands

Those processes of change can be well captured by the concept of Urban Borderlands, which describe hybrid transitional areas in which the dichotomy of elements classified as urban and suburban blur, and small-scale spaces develop through multi-layered, complex processes (Iossifova 2013, p. 4; Iossifova 2019, p. 4; Roßmeier and Weber 2021, p. 7). In these urban borderlands, a coexistence of functions can emerge, as can be seen in the Plaine de l'Ourcq in the form of commercial space, housing, garden plots, and spatially defining transportation infrastructure such as railroad tracks. With single-family housing developments adjacent to subsidized social housing, high-rise housing developments built next to lower multi-family housing, and new modern, housing construction with condominiums and social housing, the result is a mix of housing types. This is often accompanied by a mix of different levels of income and education, as well as leisure interests (Weber and Kühne 2020, pp. 49-51). Thus, socio-spatially (un)equal neighbourhoods and mosaic-like structures can be identified in the cities around the canal (ibid., p. 50).
 

^{Fig. 3: New housing construction in the former industrial area. Source: Corinna Jürgens 2022}

However, major construction sites – either for new public transport connections as part of the Grand Paris Express infrastructure project or for new residential areas – are currently making their mark on the area. They can be seen and heard from many parts of the banlieues and are contributing to constant change with new processes of boundary demarcation (see Fig. 3). These changes are attracting new residents, many of whom are either moving from Paris intra-muros – i.e., from within the former city walls or nowadays within the Boulevard périphérique (see Fig. 1) – to the new housing areas along the canal due to the tight housing market, or who are moving within the banlieues in search of a more modern apartment.
 

B/Ordering at the Canal de l’Ourcq

Previous findings of my ongoing dissertation project show that dynamic intra-urban bordering processes take place on two levels that affect the coexistence and everyday lives of rsidents: on the one hand, on the material level and thus manifested structurally, and on the other hand, on the immaterial level, that is, socially and psychologically. One example of social boundaries is the coexistence of different lifestyles. For example, residents of the banlieues associate Parisians with an 'urban lifestyle' and their moving to the banlieues with the fact that a new urbanity is penetrating into the area, thus leading to an urbanisation of the space formerly read as suburban. This 'urban lifestyle' can include consumption habits or leisure interests that differ from those of previous residents. At the same time, it is important to emphasise that homogeneity cannot be assumed for the people previously living along the Canal de l'Ourcq either. The demand for organic food, for example, can be classified as a behavioural pattern that tends to be assessed as an 'urban need' and which was likely not perceived in the area – read as suburban – until a few years ago.

Othering

These processes of demarcation, in which certain groups of people are perceived as different and certain characteristics and differences are attributed to them, can be described with the concept of Othering (Wille 2021, p. 109). Paasi (2021, p. 20, 23) distinguishes between Bordering and Ordering processes in which demarcations and classifications are constructed by social practices and discourses and thus contribute to Othering. The difference between ‘us’ and ‘the Other’ can, in addition, be linked to locational cues as well as to the characteristics attributed to the group. This can lead to the construction of pairs of opposites, such as right – wrong, good – bad, desirable – undesirable, etc. (ibid., p. 20).  These categorisations have implications for our everyday lives and, more specifically, for how we (do not) think about other groups and (do not) act with one another. Thus, these social boundary drawing processes also influence to what extent we live with or next to each other and to what extent feelings of belonging, but also of exclusion and stigmatization, may arise in our coexistence.

To analyse the dynamic bordering processes along the Canal de l’Ourcq, the concepts of Re- and Debordering are especially useful. The former describes how boundaries are (re)produced and potentially solidified, the latter how boundaries are destabilized and potentially become less significant (Liao et al. 2018, p. 1094).
 

^{Fig. 4: Modern and fenced new buildings. Source: Corinna Jürgens 2022}
 

Re- and Debordering

In the areas studied in Greater Paris, processes of Rebordering can be observed at the social level, which are expressed by the demarcations between already existing residents and the newcomers regarding lifestyles and forms of living (see Fig. 4). Without knowing the individual persons, certain characteristics are attributed to these newcomers, and it is assumed that they, like other Parisians, value organic or fairly sourced food – sticking to the example above. The individuals are associated with certain characteristics by others, assumed or observed behaviours are discursively (re-)produced, so that images of the ‘new’ in comparison to the ‘old’ are gradually formed.
 

^{Fig. 5: New bridges facilitate the exchanges across the Canal de l’Ourcq. Souce: Corinna Jürgens 2022}

In addition to new demarcations, the dissolution of borders, i.e., Debordering, can also be observed. By building new pedestrian bridges connecting the north and south banks of the canal, physical boundaries can be overcome. A new exchange is made possible through easier access to what was once a more difficult area to reach. This can be observed in Bobigny (see Fig. 5), where new housing has been built opposite a park. Formerly separate areas are now physically connected, which could lead to newcomers south of the canal encountering residents from Bobigny north of the canal, with the park being a potential place of contact.
 

Multifaceted future on the waterfront?

As illustrated, the communities along the Ourcq Canal are changing on a social and structural level. A process of gentrification emanating from the Parisian arrondissements stretches along the Ourcq Canal and is accompanied by discussions about potential displacement due to rising costs of living. In addition to nearly completed construction zones, such as in Pantin, other areas along the canal will start to see changes in the coming years.

In these dynamic Urban Borderlands along the Ourcq Canal, many transformations will continue to take place in the future, which, by drawing intra-urban boundaries, are likely to lead to the diversification of metropolitan Paris. In the wake of the metropolisation of the Métropole du Grand Paris, the new links of transportation within the Parisian suburbs through the implementation of the Grand Paris Express project, the changes in preparation of the Olympic Games in 2024 as well as new ideas of housing and work being formed through the COVID-19 pandemic, it is highly exciting to analyse these Urban Borderlands and explore social implications.
 

More information on the author’s DFG-funded PhD project can be found here.
 

Corinna Jürgens, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University
 

Literatur

Albecker, Marie-Fleur (2015): Banlieues françaises / La banlieue parisienne, périphérie réinvestie ? http://www.revue-urbanites.fr/la-banlieue-parisienne-peripherie-reinvestie/, accessed 04.05.2022.

Est Ensemble (2018): La Plaine de l’Ourcq réinvente la ville dans la Métropole. 200 ha à aménager le long du canal de l’Ourcq. Romainville. https://www.est-ensemble.fr/sites/default/files/cartoguide-plainedelourcq_mars2018.pdf, accessed 03.03.2023.

Insee (2022): Principaux résultats sur les revenus et la pauvreté des ménages en 2019. Dispositif Fichier localisé social et fiscal (Filosofi). https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6436484?sommaire=6036904#tableau-figure2_radio1, accessed 03.03.2023.

Insee (2023): Taux de chômage localisés au 3ᵉ trimestre 2022. Comparaisons régionales et départementales. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2012804, accessed 03.03.2023.

Iossifova, Deljana (2013): Searching for common ground: Urban borderlands in a world of borders and boundaries. In: Cities 34, 1–5. DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2013.01.006.

Iossifova, Deljana (2019): Borderland. In: Anthony M. Orum, Dennis Judd, Marisol Garcia Cabeza, Choon-Piew Pow und Bryan Roberts (Hg.): The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 1-4.

Liao, Kaihuai; Breitung, Werner; Wehrhahn, Rainer (2018): Debordering and rebordering in the residential borderlands of suburban Guangzhou. In: Urban Geography 39 (7), 1092-1112. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2018.1439438.

Paasi, Anssi (2021): Problematizing ‘Bordering, Ordering, and Othering’ as Manifestations of Socio‐Spatial Fetishism. In: Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 112 (1), 18–25. DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12422.

Roßmeier, Albert; Weber, Florian (2021): Hybrid Urban Borderlands – Redevelopment Efforts and Shifting Boundaries In and Around Downtown San Diego. In: Journal of Borderlands Studies (online first), 1–27. DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2021.1882872.

Weber, Florian (2016): Extreme Stadtlandschaften: Die französischen ,banlieues‘. In: Sabine Hofmeister und Olaf Kühne (Hg.): StadtLandschaften. Die neue Hybridität von Stadt und Land. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 85–109.

Weber, Florian; Kühne, Olaf (2020): Hybride Grenzen. Stadt-Land-Entwicklungsprozesse im Großraum Paris aus der Perspektive der Border Studies. In: Geographische Rundschau (1/2-2020), 48–53.

Wille, Christian (2021): Vom processual shift zum complexity shift: Aktuelle analytische Trends der Grenzforschung. In: Dominik Gerst, Maria Klessmann und Hannes Krämer (Hg.): Grenzforschung. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Praxis. Baden-Baden: Nomos (Border Studies. Cultures, Spaces, Orders, 3), 106–120.

 

Text available in German

 

Approaches to the Border between Diffusion and Fortification (Christian Wille, University of Luxembourg), 02/01/2023

Since at least the 2010s, borders have once again determined the political agenda and are increasingly at the center of social debate. At first glance, however, the resurgence of borders manifests itself in a paradoxical way. For while border walls are once again being built, fences are being put up and border facilities are being expanded as territorial markings, regulatory and control practices are increasingly fragmented and invisible in transterritorial terms. These developments both undermine and evoke the widespread idea that borders are linear markers of the territorial edge. Above all, however, they point to the need to rethink the concept of borders, which is still unquestioned in many places. For this purpose, selected approaches are presented in an overview below.
 

(1) Borders as Individualized Embodiments

In particular, the technology of the border, which is also described as “smartification,” has significantly changed the visibility and materiality of the border. So-called “smart borders” refer to monitoring devices via satellites, drones and radar systems used for the acquisition and storage of biometric data, for big-data automation or algorithmic projections of (escape) movements. Human bodies continuously enter into alliances with technical apparatuses and become carriers of the border (Amoore, 2006). The technology-based embodiment of the border, in which the human body functions as a checkpoint (Grosser/Oberprantacher 2021: 392), is regarded as the central feature of the border at the beginning of the 21st century (Schulze Wessel 2016: 52). In this context, Steffen Mau (2021: 156) distinguishes between the traditional territorial border as a “person border,” which regulates the movement of more or less all persons, and the “individualized border,” which distinguishes between border persons: “The growth of information, biometric recognition [...] is intended to ensure that the [border] persons classified as risky or undesirable [...] are filtered out, but that the flow of all other persons [...] does not come to a standstill.” (ibid.: 156f.)
 

(2) Borders as Ubiquitous Pop-Up Phenomena

These developments result in a diffusion of the border, since it can no longer be located exclusively on the territorial edge. It diffuses in space and reveals itself where regulation and control practices take place: “The biometric and electronically networked border attached to individual bodies and digital devices fills the entirety of state spaces and follows subjects wherever they move.” (Pötzsch 2021: 289) Like a watchdog in technological form, the border moves around transterritorially and strikes suddenly as soon as border persons approach: it lurks at airports, train stations or other transit points, traces through deserts or at sea and carefully observes the precalculated escape routes. As an unpredictable pop-up phenomenon, the border is spatially mobile and becomes ubiquitous (Balibar 2002: 84). However, its ubiquity is only relevant for those who are turned into border persons via (quite fluctuating) “sorting logic” (Mau 2021: 15) and thus brought into the impassibility of the border. They remain in an “ubiquitous state of potential persecution” (Pötzsch 2021: 289), which the geographer Clémence Lehec aptly describes with the term “frontière de Damoclès” (2020: 185). While border persons have to reckon with the border everywhere, which can be positioned as a control and selection apparatus at any time, for others it is hardly visible or relevant.
 

 

(3) Borders as Signatures of a “Walled World”

In addition to the dwindling visibility and differentiated ubiquity of the border, another development can be observed, which indicates the multiplication of visibly fortified borders along territorial edges (Gülzau et al. 2021; Vallet 2021). The trend of border fortification has intensified in particular in recent years, and today one fifth of country borders worldwide are equipped with fences, walls or trenches (Mau et al. 2021: 149). In this context, Benedicto et al. (2020) speak of a “walled world” when they consider the construction of border walls over the past 30 years: between 1989 and 2018, they say, their number worldwide increased from six to 63, of which 14 were erected in 2015 alone at the peak of the 2010 refugee movements. In Europe, the fortification of the internal Schengen borders began in 2015, when some EU Member States reintroduced controls and established additional border facilities as a result of refugee movements and terrorist attacks. Five years later, this process was repeated much more drastically with the hitherto unprecedented “covidfencing” (Medeiros et al. 2021) in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
 

(4) Boundaries as Longing for Collective Unity/Purity

Walls, fences and other fortifications of territorial inclusion and exclusion apparently remain “resistant institutions” (Mau et al. 2021: 150), although they are always permeable and hardly prove to be effective for actual closure processes. This contradiction is ignored in the widespread “populist glorification of borders” (Van Houtum 2021: 40) in favor of catchy arguments that stand against immigration and crime or for security and the protection of prosperity (Korte 2021: 52; Vallet 2021: 11). A prominent example of this is the wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, which Massimiliano Demata (2023) discursively exposes as a nation-constitutive othering. The linguist thus refers almost by way of example to the symbolic function of border fortifications, which are based above all on self-assurances and their securitizations. Henk van Houtum summarizes such self-constitutive processes, which materialize in border walls, with the concept of “id/entity”, which is intended to indicate the connection between territorial and collective unity/purity: “[W]e have seen an increasing desire to further strengthen the border in the name of protection and purification of a self-declared id/entity.” (2021: 34) In such processes, certain groups of people who are to be othered are usually attributed risks that legitimize an alleged protection of that which belongs to oneself through walls and fences. Border fortifications therefore do not aim exclusively at the visible border materialities. Rather, they are to be understood as materializations of cultural processes, which, driven by a “border anxiety” (Almond 2016), yield risky border persons as dispositives of self-assurance.
 

(5) Borders as Materializations of Cultural Order Processes

The multiplication of fortified borders on the territorial edges is thus revealed by cultural processes that stand for the dynamic and instrumentalized interplay of identitarian categories. Such processes follow carefully orchestrated risk policies that not only stigmatize certain groups of people but continuously mobilize the security argument with the help of threat scenarios. The (threatening) uncertainties and (existential) risks prove to be just as variable as those groups that are to be excluded or to be made border persons: “There is a constantly updated security rhetoric that is meant to recode the border again and again and make it defensible against external risks.” (Mau 2021: 158) Thus, it must also be noted for the fortified borders on the territorial edge that these are – beyond the border fortifications which are already effective regulators – unpredictable and selective filter processes. While the dwindling perceptibility and differentiated ubiquity of the border can be explained by alliances of specific bodies and technical apparatuses, in the wake of border fortifications specific groups of people are invoked for the use of stationary border materials. Both developments are based on classification practices which, as cultural order processes, are not only changeable but also generate inequalities.
 

(6) Borders as Products and Producers of Inequality

The principle of the border is based on distinctions that use or (de)stabilize socially and spatially effective cultural orders. They manifest themselves in classification practices or the digital coding of people and have rarely been enforced as extensively as technology allows today or as it is declared necessary to exclude “unwanted” border persons. However, such order processes are not equally important for all people. Etienne Balibar (2002: 81) pointed this out early on with his statement “[Borders] do not have the same meaning for everyone” and ascribed a “polysemic nature” (ibid.) to the border. In this context, the philosophers Florian Grosser and Andreas Oberprantacher (2021: 394) speak of a “plasticity of the manifestations of borders”, which causes an “unequal distribution of (im)mobility.” The plasticity, which represents the selectivity of the principle of the border, is also described by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson (2013: 175) with a variable “hardening and softening [of the border].” In this way, both authors want to emphasize the inequalities that are (re)produced via the selective logic of order of borders. Borders are therefore inscribed certain valences or relevance, which differ with regard to different (border) persons and are expressed in correspondingly specific efficiencies. Borders can therefore be characterized as multivalent (Wille et al. 2023).

Christian Wille, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Luxembourg
 

Bibliography

Almond, B. (2016) ‘Border Anxiety: Culture, Identity and Belonging,’ Philosophy, Vol. 91 No. 4, p.1–19.

Amoore, L. (2006) ‘Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror,’ Political Geography, Vol. 25 No. 3, p.336–351.

Balibar, E. (2002) Politics and the Other Scene, Verso, London/New York.

Benedicto, R. A., Akkerman, M. und Brunet, P. (2020) A walled world towards a global apartheid, Centre Delàs Report 46, Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau, Barcelona.

Demata, M. (2023) Discourses of Borders and the Nation in the USA. A Discourse-Historical Analysis, Routledge, London/New York.

Grosser, F. und Oberprantacher, A. (2021) ‚Einleitung: Pandemie der Grenze,‘ Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie, Vol. 8 No. 1, p.385–402.

Gülzau, F., Mau, S. und Korte, K. (2021) ‘Borders as Places of Control. Fixing, Shifting and Reinventing State Borders. An Introduction,’ Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, Vol. 46 No. 3, p.7–22.

Korte, K. (2021) ‘Filtering or Blocking Mobility? Inequalities, Marginalization, and Power Relations at Fortified Borders,’ Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, Vol. 46 No. 3, p.49–77.

Lehec, C. (2020) Filmer les graffitis aux frontières de Dheisheh. Sur les murs de Palestine, MetisPresses, Genève.

Medeiros, E., Ramírez, M., Ocskay, G. und Peyrony, J. (2021) ‘Covidfencing effects on cross-border deterritorialism: the case of Europe,’ European Planning Studies, Vol 29 No 5, p.962–982.

Mau, S. (2021) Sortiermaschinen. Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert, Beck, München.

Mau, S., Gülzau, F., Korte, K. (2021) ‚Grenzen erkunden. Grenzinfrastrukturen und die Rolle fortifizierter Grenzen im globalen Kontext.’ in Löw, M., Sayman, V., Schwerer, J. and Wolf, H. (Ed.), Am Ende der Globalisierung. Über die Refiguration von Räumen. transcript, Bielefeld, p.129–153.

Mezzadra, S. und Neilson, B. (2013) Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, Duke University Press, Durham.

Pötzsch, H. (2021) ‘Grenzen und Technologie,’ in Gerst, D., Klessmann, M. und Krämer, H. (Ed.), Grenzforschung. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium (Border Studies. Cultures, Spaces, Orders), Nomos, Baden-Baden, p.283–296.

Schulze Wessel, J. (2016) ‘On Border Subjects: Rethinking the Figure of the Refugee and the Undocumented Migrant,’ Constellations, Vol. 23 No. 1, p. 46–57.

Vallet, É. (2021) ‘State of Border Walls in a Globalized World,’ in Vallet, É. und Bissonnette, A. (Ed.), Borders and Border Walls. In-Security, Symbolism, Vulnerabilities, Routledge, London/New York, p.7–24.

Van Houtum, H. (2021) ‘Beyond ‚borderism‘: overcoming discriminative b/ordering and othering,’ Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol. 112 No. 1, p.34–43.

Wille, C.; Weber, F.; Fellner, A. (Ed.) (2023) ‘B/Orders are (not) everywhere (for everyone): On the multivalence of borders in a flee(t)ing Europe | Zur Multivalenz von Grenzen in einem flüchtigen Europa,’ Borders in Perspective, Vol. 8.

 

Text available in German.

Learning from the Corona Crisis? German-Polish Border Region – 30 Years after the Signing of the Neighborhood Treaty (Elżbieta Opiłowska, University of Wrocław), 19/08/2021

In March 2020 the German-Polish border was – like many other borders in Europe – closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Because this decision was taken by the Polish government in Warsaw, the border closure came as a shock both to inhabitants of the border area and to local political actors. For here state power was being manifested against local and regional decision-makers as well as the EU (Tarvet and Klatt, 2021) and announcing the "advent of unilateralism" (Böhm, 2021). Suddenly cross-border commuters were no longer to go to work, schoolchildren had to stay at home, many families and friends were separated (Jańczak, 2020; Opiłowska, 2020; Wille and Kanesu, 2020; Weber, Theis, Terrolion, 2021).

Young people, for whom open borders within the Schengen Area had until now gone without saying, saw bridges blocked off with fences and border police posts for the first time. The older generation remembered this experience from the Cold War period, when the German-Polish border stood for a tightly controlled border regime. What has this crisis revealed? What lessons can we learn from it? Before I go into these questions, I will briefly present the history of the German-Polish border region.

 

Regulated neighbourliness

Historically, the German-Polish border region belongs to the new border regions, which came into being in the wake of the Second World War and the westward shift of the German-Polish border. This was a political decision linked to mass population movements: Thousands of Germans had to leave their homes, which were occupied by displaced people from the eastern regions lost to the Soviet Union, returning forced labourers, people resettling from central and southern Poland and many others looking to start a new life in the "Wild West" (Halicka, 2013). Unlike in the old, historic border regions here lived only people who had no experience of being cross-border neighbours, i.e. there were no minority or mixed marriages, no cultural transfers, and the language was a bigger barrier to communication. What is more, for years to come the border region would be subjected to strong ideologisation. At first it was communist propaganda about the peace border and the socialist friendship between the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland.

 

Milestones for Europeanisation

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the idea of European integration very quickly took hold: The border towns were dubbed "Euro(pa)towns" and the Euroregions created in the 1990s (Euroregion Neisse, Pro Europe Viadrina, Spree-Neisse-Bober and Pomerania) were supposed to form the basis for cross-border cooperation. This "EUrope talk" was perceived by the border area inhabitants, however, above all as a project of the mayors', and national stereotypes as well as mental barriers would persist for a long time yet (Opiłowska, 2009). The next watershed moments, which broke down the obstacles in the German-Polish relationship the little by little, were Poland's accession to the EU (2004), Poland's signing of the Schengen Agreement (2007) and the opening of the German job market to Polish workers (2011). In 2014 the German-Polish Committee for Spatial Planning developed the "Common Future Vision for the German-Polish Interaction Area – Horizon 2030" in which the border is no longer depicted as a dividing line between two States and is only visible over the border rivers, the Oder and the Neisse. Horizon 2030 seeks to promote, among other things, the development of the common jobs market, the promotion of tourism, cooperation between universities and educational institutions as well as the protection of the natural and cultural heritage.  This vision of an integrated living space was actually already a reality for many of the inhabitants of the border area.

 

Drivers of cross-border cooperation

The pandemic years 2020 and 2021 were important anniversary years for German-Polish bilateral relations. For in 1990 the German-Polish Border Treaty was signed, followed a year later by the Treaty of Good Neighbourship and Friendly Cooperation. The two documents laid the foundations for future cross-border collaboration.  In Article 12 of the Good Neighbourship Treaty special importance was given to "partnership-based cooperation between regions, cities, districts and other local authorities, especially in the border area." In addition, both States undertook to facilitate and promote such cooperation in all fields.

Although German-Polish intergovernmental relations have cooled significantly since the change of government in Poland in 2015, cross-border cooperation has continued to actively develop. The historical heritage seemed no longer to play any role at all, and the border was considered more as a resource. The EU funding programmes have provided good framework conditions for cross-border projects and deeper integration and have been an important driving force for transnational action. The saying "to be in the same boat" used by one of my institutional interviewees to describe the situation in the border region reflects the mindset of the local actors very nicely (Opiłowska, 2021). No longer were ideas of reconciliation or European integration in the foreground when elaborating cross-border projects - as they were in the 1990s –, but rather what dominated was common interest and a practical orientation. Some actors even regret the lack of the idealistic underpinning of the bilateral relationship and believed that the orientation towards practical problems on the ground cannot in long term provide the necessary driving force for cross-border cooperation (Opiłowska, 2021). Will the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences mark a new turning point in the development of German-Polish relations?

 

Covid-19 and the closing of the borders: reactions

The closing of the German-Polish border provoked a range of different reactions (Kajta and Opiłowska, 2021a). Among them – as was also the case in other border regions – a strong feeling of solidarity with the neighbours, which was expressed in performative acts. In addition, open letters were published and appeals made to the Polish government, emphasising the special nature of the border region and pointing out the negative economic and social consequences of the closing of the border. Czesław Fiedorowicz, chairman of the board of the Federation of Euroregions of the Republic of Poland, appealed, for example, to the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, to lift the border restrictions in the Euroregions: "We live in a strong symbiosis and need each other. Guben for Gubin, Löcknitz for Szczecin, Zgorzelec and Görlitz, Cieszyn and Ceský Tešín, Nowy Targ and Kežmarok, SuwalkIand Marijampole are ostensibly 'abroad', but relations between people, their place of work, residence, family ties, school and university education, treatment, health care and daily contacts are often very intense."

 

^{Abbildung 1: Banner am Flussufer in Słubice, Foto: Daniel Szurka, Quelle: https://www.facebook.com/NaszeSlubicePL (23.04.2020)}

Furthermore, on 17 April 2020 a Polish Facebook group called "cross-border commuters all together (all countries)" was set up with the aim of supporting each other. On 19 April 2020 a manifesto of border region inhabitants was published, which demanded the abolition of the obligation to isolate after crossing the border for people who live and work in the border area. In addition, it emphasised that the Polish government had implemented the border closure without regard to the inhabitants of the border area, so that they had to choose between professional and everyday – human – duties (separation from children, parents, partners), as daily commuting was no longer possible.   The manifesto also invoked the European identity of the border area inhabitants: "All that [the possibility of living a cross-border life] was guaranteed to us by Europa – because we are not only Polish, and we will remember that, but we also feel like free Europeans." This normative argumentation referring to a European identity also emerged – alongside the emphasis on the difficult situation for border commuters – in the protect actions that were organised in the German-Polish border regions in April and May 2020.

 

Border reopening with strong gestures

Finally, the border was reopened in the night of 12-13 June 2020, which was enthusiastically celebrated by hundreds of Frankfurt and Słubice residents.  This was symbolised by the spontaneous embrace between the Mayor of Frankfurt (Oder), René Wilke, and the Mayor of Słubice, Mariusz Olejniczak, on the border bridge. The gesture made the headlines, when the Frankfurt Mayor reported himself for it afterwards – after all, the embrace was a breach of the coronavirus measures. But he did not regret it: "The situation, in which Mariusz and I briefly embraced, which had something liberating about it, allowed me to appreciate what a burden had fallen away from many citizens of our cities. Our actions as representatives of these people was, for me, never as authentic as it was in those three seconds The gesture was not planned, but important." (Press office, 15.06.2020, source: www.frankfurt-oder.de)

 

^{Figure 2: The embrace between René Wilke (Mayor of Frankfurt (Oder)) and Mariusz Olejniczak (Mayor of Słubice) on the border bridge, photo: Peggy Lohse [Waldmann, MOZ, 13.6.2020]}

Crisis as a stimulus for cross-border cooperation

My interviews with local actors who are responsible for German-Polish cross-border collaboration (see Kajta und Opiłowska, 2021b), shown that Polish and German experts are convinced, that the experience of the border closure will give both decision-makers and the inhabitants of the border area a boost and a new energy for cooperation.  They assume that the border closure has made the inhabitants aware of the large extent to which their lives are already organised across the border and that open borders represent a European achievement.  On the other hand, this experience has also revealed the weak and fragile position of local structures and "agency" when they come up against State actors. For this reason the local actors wish to improve exchanges with the central authorities, so that their voice is better heard in Warsaw and in Berlin and greater recognition is given to the special relations in the border regions. These new cross-border strategies and projects are still are still being put together, and so it is not yet possible to assess how successful the local actors will be in their endeavours.

 

Elżbieta Opiłowska, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Wrocław

 

References

Böhm, H. (2021), Five Roles of Cross-border Cooperation Against Rebordering, Journal of Borderlands Studies, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2021.1948900

Halicka, B. (2013), Polens Wilder Westen. Erzwungene Migration und die kulturelle Aneignung des Oderraums 1945–1948. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.

Jańczak, J. (2020), The German-Polish border, re-bordering and the pandemic: centers vs. peripheries?, in: Ulrich, P., Cyrus, N. und Pilhofer, A. (Hrsg.), Grenzen und Ordnungen in Bewegung in Zeiten der Corona-Krise. Analysen zu Region und Gesellschaft, „Working Paper Series B/ORDERS IN MOTION“, No. 8, S. 17-19. DOI: 10.11584/B-ORDERS.8.

Kajta, J. and Opiłowska, E. (2021a), Community Response to the Revival of a Border: The Case of Two Twin Towns in Central Europe (in peer-review process).

Kajta, J. und Opiłowska, E. (2021b), The impact of Covid-19 on structure and agency in a borderland. The case of two twin towns in Central Europe (in peer-review process).

Tarvet, R. and Klatt, M. (2021), The impact of the Corona crisis on borderland living in the Danish-German border region with a special focus on the two national minorities, National Identities, DOI: 10.1080/14608944.2021.1938522

Opiłowska, E. (2009), Kontinuitäten und Brüche deutsch-polnischer Erinnerungskulturen. Görlitz/Zgorzelec 1945-2006, Dresden: Neisse Verlag.

Opiłowska, E. (2020), The Covid-19 Crisis: The End of a Borderless Europe? European Societies. DOI: 10.1080/14616696.2020.1833065.

Opiłowska, E. (2021), Determinants of the Cross-Border Cooperation in the German-Polish Borderlands. In: Opiłowska, E. und Sus, M. (Hrsg.), Poland and Germany in the European Union. The Multi-Dimensional Dynamics of Bilateral Relations, Abingdon: Routledge, S. 208-226.

Waldmann, N. (2020), Bürgermeister von Frankfurt und Słubice umarmen die offene Grenze, Märkische Oderzeitung, 13.06.2020, https://www.moz.de/lokales/frankfurt-oder/stadtbruecke-buergermeister-von-frankfurt-und-slubice-umarmen-die-offene-grenze-49172058.html [Zugriff am 22.7.2021].

Weber, F., Theis, R., Terrolion, K (Hrsg.), (2021), Grenzerfahrungen | Expériences transfrontalières, Wiesbaden: Springer VS. 

Wille, C. und Kanesu, R. (Hrsg.), (2020) Bordering in Pandemic Times: Insights into the COVID-19 Lockdown, Borders in Perspective 4, DOI: 10.25353/ubtr-xxxx-b825-a20b.

 

Text available in German.

 

Borderland experiences – an interim balance of the impact of Covid-19 on the interlinked SaarLorLux region (Florian Weber, Saarland University), 22/07/2021

Since spring 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic has seized and shaken our existing habits and certainties inside out.  Who could have imagined that it would end up in a "new normal", with us tracking information on a daily basis, how many Covid-19 cases have been recorded overall or at regional or local level and how many deaths? The feverish race by different manufacturers to progress with the development of vaccines also represented a first. And who could have known at the outset, with which vaccine from which manufacturer a protection against the flu or similar was developed - where now we are weighing viral vector vaccines against mRNA vaccines produced by AstraZeneca, BioNTec-Pfizer or Moderna? Masks – initially fabric, then OP or FFP2 masks - represent further components in the picture. Roughly a year and a half of a pandemic in several waves has ultimately already turned the extraordinary into a lasting and integral part of our everyday lives.

Meanwhile research projects in different (inter-)disciplinary contexts are either already underway or in preparation. Very early on in the first wave of the "corona crisis", the UniGR-Center for Border Studies initiated a BorderObs-Blog, in order to examine what for many border researchers was scarcely imaginable: reinforced border controls and border closures on a global scale and even within the European Union (subsequently compiled by Wille and Kanesu, 2020; for example, the to-date positively surreal Figure 1). It is an irony of history that of all things 35 years after the Schengen Agreement was signed,  national state borders should be going up again, on health protection grounds, and so undermine the idea – or a rather the utopia perhaps – of a "borderless Europe" (Opiłowska, 2021). Overall what we observed in spring 2020 was a "strategy of hardening existing borders" (Cyrus and Ulrich, 2021, p. 26). Perhaps in this "national reflex" we are simultaneously seeing a warning against "taking things for granted": being able to move freely around the EU is not simply an incontrovertible matter of course and until now free movement of persons has remained defined largely within the conceptual framework of borders (Wassenberg, 2020, p. 115). Around 1.9 million cross-border commuters (2018) in the Schengen area depend on that freedom on a daily basis (Meninno and Wolff, 2020, unpaged). The events of the pandemic require a new focus from Border Studies on Europe's internal borders, to look at new areas and issues, as Christian Wille recently spelled out in his BorderObs contribution of 20 June 2021. I also cannot get what has happened on the borders out of my mind.

 

^{Figure 1: Barricaded border point – technically a "non-notified border crossing" – between Merzig (Saarland) and Waldwisse (Moselle) in spring 2020. Source: Picture Brigitte Weber 2020.}

 

The border watershed of mid-March 2020 and its consequences

In 2020 and 2021 I was able to have conversations and written exchanges with politicians at different levels, with administrative staff and actors in the health and cultural fields, the media and science. It became quite consistently apparent that the middle of March marked a "crack" in the idea of Europe or – with my particular focus on the German-French-Luxembourg border region  – a setback for cross-border relations. In an online round table debate on 8 July 2021, Christophe Arend, a member of the French National Assembly, remarked that many people had experienced the tightening of border controls as a de facto "closing of the borders". "Mental borders" were and are back on the agenda (Wassenberg, 2020, p. 119). Medeiros et al. (2021) have in the meantime examined the impacts of European examples  of border-related measures and described them as "covidfencing". This choice of word translates the "feeling" of the lockdown very well. As a border researcher, it seems to me to be necessary at the same time to take a differentiated approach to such forms and effects of bordering. I consider it important here to take account of difference scale levels and the way they are interdependent on each other – from European supranational actions to the consequences for individuals, who for example in the meantime have lost their footing in the midst of all the different regulations.

The Covid-19 crisis has, alongside the darker sides of the border-region situation – such as the resurgence what was thought to be long-overcome resentment – clearly and obviously made us aware of how border spaces today already represent interlinked regions, contact zones or borderlands (Crossey, 2020; Crossey and Weber, 2020; Wille and Weber, 2020). This has proved to be particularly striking in the Greater Region with its "core" SaarLorLux: About 250,000 cross-border workers live this cross-border interaction; for them cross-border mobility has become the norm and cross-border vocational training is gaining in importance (Pigeron-Piroth et al., 2021). When in spring 2020 smaller border crossing points from Germany into France and Luxembourg were closed and the traffic flows concentrated at the larger crossing points like the Goldene Bremm, long queues formed at the borders due to this border-crossing normality, but also due to the impractical controls. The significance of Luxembourg as a job magnet was already well-known before the crisis.  But it has also cast a spotlight for the wider public on the barely 15,000 cross-border workers who commute into Saarland every day and who, among other things, play a decisive role in the health sector (see Figure 2). Expressions of solidarity and protest rallies – which conceptually should be interpreted as practices of "deborderisation" (see Wille 2021) – have shown that the shared living space ("bassin de vie" in French) is seen and defended as an achievement. The meeting of foreign ministers Jean Asselborn (Luxembourg) and Heiko Maas (Germany) on the Schengen Bridge on 16 May 2020 can be seen as a symbol of the fact that developed ties should not heedlessly be cut. Saarland's Economy Minister also "pitched in" on a practical level, when it came to clearing barriers aside and opening border crossing points. Saarland broadcasting's SaarLorLux-Trend surveys in Saarland, Moselle and Luxemburg in November and December 2020 indicated that the neighbourly relations of some residents were seen as being under attack (SR, 2020) and so sensitive actions to "patch up" cross-border relations began to seem opportune.

 

Figure 2: Cross-border commuters: within the Greater Region (2019). Source: IBA|OIE.

 

Lessons learned from the first wave

When in March 2021, Moselle was declared as a "virus variant area", the question arose as to what we had actually learnt from spring 2020. Quite clearly all the obligations for cross-border commuters to be able to present a new negative lateral flow test every 48 hours represented a logical requirement.  But the anger was audible, and visible with the demonstrations that occurred.  At the same time, there were some noticeable lessons: Decision-makers were informed of German measures earlier. A joint French-German test centre was built at the Goldene Bremm border crossing in Saarbrücken  Instead of border controls, a stop-and-check system was introduced in the hinterland. Formal and informal cross-border exchanges therefore received a boost. What played a decisive role were impulses that resulted from the experiences of the first wave. 

In a specialist book focused on the French-German relationship (Weber et al., 2021), which I worked on with Roland Theis and Karl Terrollion in summer 2021 as an interim review of the situation, readers can gain deeper insights into the events that are just touched upon here. In it we have brought together a number of essay-type contributions and interviews with politicians at national and local level in the interlinked Saarland-Moselle region, representatives of cross-border initiatives, the economy, culture and the media as well as scientists. Rather than a "black and white" picture, what emerges from the thirty plus contributions to the book is a wide-ranging mosaic of diverse compartments, which together form an overall picture of border experiences during the pandemic: all the contributors are united in their impression that cross-border exchanges and the European idea of open internal borders should not be gambled with lightly and that the crisis makes it impressively plain that the future should consist of coordinated and joint action.

From the perspectives of border space and multilevel governance research my further interest is in the systematisation of border-region narratives and future political and practical action, linked to the question of the extent to which claims made and objectives set in the meantime will lead to institutionalised forms of cross-border cooperation.  Without taking anything away from the relevance of Europe's external border and discussion of the EU border regime, Europe's internal borders, under the changed circumstances in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, appear accordingly as a productive subject for research, with a view to generating fundamental insights into the future of the European Union and the Schengen Area.

 

Florian Weber, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University

 

References

Crossey, N. (2020) ‘Corona – neue Herausforderungen und Perspektiven für Grenzraumpolitiken und grenzüberschreitende Governance’, in Wille, C. and Kanesu, R. (Hg.), Bordering in Pandemic Times: Insights into the COVID-19 Lockdown. Borders in Perspective 4, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Luxemburg, Trier, p. 69–72.

Crossey, N. and Weber, F. (2020) ‘Zur Konstitution multipler Borderlands im Zuge der Frankreichstrategie des Saarlandes’, in Weber, F. et al. (Hg.), Geographien der Grenzen. Räume – Ordnungen – Verflechtungen, Springer VS, Wiesbaden, p. 145–166.

Cyrus, N. and Ulrich, P. (2021) ‘Verflechtungssensible Maßnahmenräume: Lehren aus dem Umgang mit der COVID-19-Pandemie in der Doppelstadt Frankfurt (Oder) und Słubice’, Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 24–33.

Medeiros, E., Guillermo Ramírez, M., Ocskay, G. and Peyrony, J. (2021) ‘Covidfencing effects on cross-border deterritorialism: the case of Europe’, European Planning Studies, Vol. 29, No. 5, p. 962–982.

Meninno, R. and Wolff, G. (2020) ‘As the Coronavirus spreads, can the EU afford to close its borders?: VoxEU.org – CEPR’s policy portal’. https://voxeu.org/content/coronavirus-spreads-can-eu-afford-close-its-borders (10. Mai 2021).

Opiłowska, E. (2021) ‘The Covid-19 crisis: the end of a borderless Europe?’, European Societies, Vol. 23, sup1, p. 589-S600.

Pigeron-Piroth, I., Funk, I., Nienaber, B., Dörrenbächer, H.P. and Belkacem, R. (2021) ‘Der grenzüberschreitende Arbeitsmarkt der Großregion: Der Einfluss der COVID-19-Pandemie’, Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 74–85.

SR (2020) ‘Unterschiedliche Bewertung der Grenzschließungen’. https://www.sr.de/sr/home/nachrichten/politik_wirtschaft/saarlandtrend/saarlandtrend_2020/saarlorluxtrend_2020_grenzschliessungen_100.html (8. July 2021).

Wassenberg, B. (2020) ‘“Return of Mental Borders”: A Diary of COVID-19 Closures between Kehl, Germany, and Strasbourg, France’, Borders in Globalization Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 114–120.

Weber, F., Theis, R. and Terrolion, K. (Hg.), (2021) Grenzerfahrungen | Expériences transfrontalières. COVID-19 und die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen | Les relations franco-allemandes à l‘heure de la COVID-19, 2021, Springer VS, Wiesbaden, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-33318-8

Wille, C. (2021), European Border Region Studies in Times of Borderization, BorderObs (20/06/2021), online (8 July 2021).

Wille, C. and Kanesu, R. (Hg.), (2020) Bordering in Pandemic Times: Insights into the COVID-19 Lockdown. Borders in Perspective 4, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Luxemburg, Trier.

Wille, C. and Weber, F. (2020) ‘Analyzing border geographies in times of COVID-19’, in Mein, G.   nd Pause, J. (Hg.), Self and Society in the Corona Crisis. Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences, Melusina Press, Esch-sur-Alzette, online, DOI: 10.26298/phs9-t618.

Text available in French and German.

Florian Weber, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University 

European Border Region Studies in Times of Borderization (Christian Wille, University of Luxembourg), 20/06/2021

2020 was the first time since the nation building that the borders of so many countries were closed at the same time. This event can be seen as the (preliminary) climax of a whole series of territorial (self-)securitizations, which calls into question the idea of the “borderless world” that emerged in the 1990s. For while territorial borders had seemed to lose their meaning under the influence of the expanding Internet, the fall of the Iron Curtain, growing mobility as well as global climate and environmental issues, a renaissance of borders has indeed been observed for around two decades. This stems largely from more recent social and political developments, such as the sudden increase in terrorist attacks in the 2000s or the migration management by western states which has, with increasing clarity, turned into a crisis. These developments have not only brought about the accelerated digitalization of the border regimes, the temporary reintroduction of border controls in the Schengen Area and the sealing off of the EU external borders, but also led to a multiplication of border infrastructures.

This development suggests that we have entered an age of borderization. Border (region) studies is also reacting to this and has been working for some time with concepts that detect borders in social processes and thus divert attention from the territorial edges to those social “arenas” in which and through which borders “take place”. When dealing with such “arenas,” two tendencies can be identified: While international border studies, under the influence of refugee movements and migration research, focuses primarily on the mobility and diffusion of borders and their establishment, stabilization and infiltration, European border regions studies – guided by the ideal of a “Europe without borders” – is particularly interested in what is happening on the territorial edges within the EU and in the gradual relativization of their separating effects. The latter orientation has been evident since at least the 1980s, when legal issues of cross-border cooperation became more important and the understanding of the EU’s internal borders changed from “dividing scars of history” to “connecting seams” (Courlet 1988). This conception of borders as permeable bridges was solidified in the 1990s as the integration process progressed, in which border regions played an important role from then on. The political importance of border regions, which has also persisted during the waves of enlargement, is still reflected in European border region studies to this day. It is closely interwoven with the political project of European integration, which explains the focus on destabilization processes, the permeability of borders and a certain normative orientation of the numerous and often unrelated studies of (trans)border regions in Europe.
 

Borderization in European Border Regions

With this in mind, it seems as if European border region studies has been overtaken by global developments that have ushered in an age of borderization. This impression is reinforced in light of the familiar guiding principle of a “Europe without borders,” which has lost a lot of its appeal with Brexit, growing Euroscepticism and an increasingly expensive EU border regime. It was first startlingly questioned in 2015 when, due to the refugee movements and terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, some EU member states reintroduced border controls. Five years later, the EU’s internal borders were once again reactivated, although this time much more drastically and with an entirely new topic of (in)security. While security was established in 2015 with reference to that which is foreign, security provisions for a country’s own population were legitimized in 2020 via the external virus (Nossem 2020). This refers to the hitherto unprecedented “covidfencing,” a term which Medeiros/Hublet et al. (2020) use to describe the extensive border closings during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Of the EU members, Slovenia was the first to close its border on March 11th, followed by Denmark on March 14th, and by the end of the month all of the other EU states – with the exception of Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden – imposed drastic entry restrictions at their borders as well.

While the timeline of the border closings is now well documented, the act of processing the experience of these covidfencing actions in the Schengen Area has only just begun. These include, for example, recording the socio-economic effects in border regions (MOT 2021), the proposals for strategies to jointly manage the socio-economic effects across borders (Medeiros/Hublet et al. 2020), for improved cross-border crisis management (Coatleven/Ramírez et al. 2020) or critical considerations of hasty covidfencing with regard to its efficiency in containing the virus. One aspect of covidfencing processing that has so far not been addressed concerns the limitations on the daily lives of the border region inhabitants. Apart from a few episodic insights (BIG-Review 2020; Opiłowska 2020; Ulrich/Cyrus et al. 2020; Wille/Kanesu 2020) in the experience and the handling of the border closings, there are still no systematic studies of the everyday realities in the border regions as “arenas” of borderization and deborderization. However, numerous developments and events since March 2020 offer starting points, from which a few examples will be named in the Greater Region SaarLorLux and on the German-Polish border.

The explosive nature of the everyday dimensions of covidfencing was evident in the border region between Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg (Greater Region SaarLorLux), especially in April 2020 on the German-French border and in September 2020 on the German-Luxembourg border in connection with cross-border commuters for work and recreation. At that time, they became a reference to resentment that had long been believed to have been overcome, the articulation of which the press pointedly referred to as “corona racism” (Drobinski 2020). Borderization in the course of the pandemic not only manifested itself in the form of strict filtering checks, but the observed distancing from the ‘other’ can be qualified as an “arena” of covidfencing. There is no information (yet) available on the spread of such mechanisms of (self-)securitization in European border regions (and the possibility of them leaving long-term traces). However, Opiłowska (2020: 9) also states with regard to the border closings on the German-Polish border “that these top-down decisions [border closures] ‘are fueling the narrative that foreign people and foreign goods are a source of danger and vulnerability’ (Alden 2020) and thus construct the social boundaries of the ‘others’ as a threat.”

As a result of covidfencing, border region residents have also initiated actions aimed at processes of deborderization. In response to the top-down measures, solidarity and affinity with the people on the other side of the border were articulated, which can be explained by the experience of restricted freedom of movement in everyday life and work across borders and/or a heightened awareness of a “Europe without borders.” For example, in the spring of 2020 in the Greater Region SaarLorLux and on the German-Polish border, large banners with expressions of solidarity were hung, which were visible from central locations or hung directly on the affected borders:

• at a motorway entrance to the German city of Trier with the inscription “L’Europe, c’est la liberté, l’amitié et la solidarité. Metz + Trèves pour toujours” (Europe is freedom, friendship and solidarity. Metz + Trier forever);
• at the Friendship Bridge over the Saar River, which connects the German Kleinblittersdorf with the French Grosbliederstroff: “La Sarre ou la Lorraine. Aidez-vous les uns les autres et restez fort!” (Saarland or Lorraine. Help each other and stay strong!);
• on the city bridge between Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany and Słubice in Poland: “Im Herzen vereint und gemeinsam stark. Wir sehen uns bald wieder! | Razem łatwiej przetrwać najtrudniejsze chwile. Do zobaczenia wkrótce!” (United in heart and strong together. We’ll meet again soon!);
• on the banks of the border river Oder between the German Frankfurt (Oder) and the Polish Słubice: “Bleibt gesund, Freunde!” (Stay healthy, friends!), “Wir gehören zusammen” (We belong together).

Various protest rallies and symbolic actions, such as the one on the German-Polish border on 24/25 April and 9/10 May 2020, were noticeably sharper in tone and can be seen as explicit challenges to covidfencing. There, the border area residents and cross-border commuters protested against border closings and quarantine requirements with the slogans “Don’t separate families,” “We want to work and live with dignity,” “Let us go to work” and “Let us go home” (Opiłowska 2020: 7). Similar challenges to the border closings took place in the border tripoint of Germany, France, and Luxembourg: In April the “Schengen is alive” campaign was initiated here, in which the border region residents in the Luxembourg wine-growing village of Schengen and the surrounding communities raised awareness for weeks on freedom of movement as a European achievement worth protecting. On the German-French border between Saarland and Grand Est, activists from the transnational youth association “Young European Federalists” dismantled the barriers on 3 May 2020 in a symbolic action at two closed border crossings and sprayed “#DontTouchMySchengen” onto the asphalt.
 

^{Image 1: Demonstration “Grenzen auf! Otwarcia granic!” (Open the borders!) on 24 April 2020 on the city bridge between Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany and Słubice in Poland, photo © Janek Coppenhagen}

 

^{Image 2: Protest “Grenzsturm im Mai 2020” (Storm the border - May 2020) of the youth organization “Young European Federalists” on the German-French border on 3 May 2020, photo © Young European Federalists}

 

^{Image 3: Demonstration “Tous ensemble – Alle zusammen” (All together) on 6 March 2021 on the German-French border (Saarbrücken / Stiring-Wendel), photo © Pierre Hilpert}

 

^{Image 4: Protest of the “Comité de Défense des Travailleurs Frontaliers de la Moselle” on 20 March 2021 on the German-French border (Rilchingen-Hanweiler / Sarreguemines), photo © Laurent Molinier}

Protests in border regions have been observed again in 2021 as a result of covidfencing. Although the Schengen internal borders have been largely reopened since June 2020, with a few (temporary) exceptions, many border area residents feel that the quarantine requirements in the event of a possible border crossing and the current testing requirements are de facto covidfencing. This mainly affects cross-border commuters, who usually cross a state border every day and are therefore particularly entangled in the quarantine and testing regulations. The rallies by cross-border commuters from the French department of Moselle, who have been required to submit a negative PCR test every 48 hours after entering Germany since March 2nd, testify to this. At the protest rallies in the spring 2021, the French border area residents protested this requirement, which, despite the German-French test center set up especially for this purpose at the border, has turned out to be impractical in everyday life. They demand a reduced testing frequency or even the abolition of the testing requirement.

However, a number of the slogans that have been used make it just as clear that the entry regulations into Germany are perceived as inadmissible bordering or even violent categorization. Slogans such as “Tous ensemble – Alle zusammen” (All together) or “Nous ne pouvons pas être séparés, même pas par un test PCR.” (We cannot be separated, not even by a PCR test.) emphasize a currently “interrupted” sense of belonging, but also a “resistant” affinity with the residents across the border. The call for de-differentiation comes on the one hand from the decades-long tradition of employing French cross-border commuters in the neighboring German state of Saarland and, on the other hand, above all from the perceived stigmatization of cross-border commuters as ‘dangerous others.’ In businesses and companies in Germany, cross-border commuters work side by side with non-cross-border commuters who are not (yet) subject to a test in their country of residence in March 2021. Thus, the protests of the French cross-border commuters should be understood as a challenge to everyday covidfencing, which implicates the selective testing regulations and, in the end, turns out to be a biopolitical othering. This is especially evident in the slogans used, “Vous tracez une nouvelle frontière – Ihr zieht eine neue Grenze” (You’re creating a new border), “Le test PCR n’est pas un passeport.” (A PCR test is not a passport) or “Nous ne sommes pas des pestiférés ! Assez de discrimination !” (We are not lepers! Enough with the discrimination!)
 

Challenges for European Border Region Studies

The outlined logics of borderization that (should) generate definiteness and certainties via external reference subjects (terrorists, virus, the ‘other’) illustrate the dynamics and complexity of bordering processes, as they have so far been primarily addressed by international border studies. Also primarily found in international border studies is the contestation of borders and thus also the question of who can and does participate in what way and with what interests and effects in (de)bordering practices. Civil society actors with their activist or artivist initiatives as “arenas” for political intervention is particularly emphasized. In response to covidfencing, however, such interventions can now also be observed in European border regions, which have generally had little experience with civic contestation of borders. These initiatives have so far not been taken into account in European border region studies, neither in the context of covidfencing processes nor otherwise.

However, in light of the forms of protest mentioned that are likely to intensify in border regions, European border region studies is well advised to deal more with the establishment and stabilization of borders but also with their civic undermining and contestation. After all, the age of borderization has now progressed through global migration, Euroscepticism and the pandemic to the nucleus of European integration – into the border regions. A corresponding expansion of the research agenda to include the contested dis/orderings of borders does not mean, however, that European border region studies must drop its normative requirement or that it must emancipate itself from the political project of integration and the guiding ideas associated with it. Rather, the perspective should be broadened, which covers the “arenas” and logics of border (de)stabilization in border regions, provides alternative concepts for cross-border civil society and European citizenship and thus helps to understand the interrelationship between processes of borderization and deborderization in the Schengen Area. To what extent European border region studies will be inspired by international (and critical) border studies remains to be seen.
 

Christian Wille, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Université du Luxembourg
 

Bibliography

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Coatleven, L., Hublet, F. & Rospars, T. (2020). Subsidiäres Krisenmanagement in der Corona-Pandemie: Bundesrepublikanisches Erfolgsmodell und grenzübergreifende Perspektiven. Paris: Groupe d’études géopolitiques.

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Nossem, E. (2020). Linguistic rebordering: Constructing COVID-19 as an external threat. In Wille, C. & R. Kanesu. (Hrsg.), Bordering in Pandemic Times. Insights into the COVID-19 Lockdown (UniGR-CBS Thematic Issue, vol. 4), 77-80. doi: 10.25353/ubtr-xxxx-b825-a20b

Opiłowska, Elżbieta (2020): The Covid-19 crisis: the end of a borderless Europe? European Societies 23:1, S. 589-600, doi: 10.1080/14616696.2020.1833065

Ulrich, P., Cyrus, N. & Pilhofer, A. (eds.) (2020): Grenzen und Ordnungen in Bewegung in Zeiten der Corona-Krise. Analysen zu Region und Gesellschaft (Working Paper Series B/ORDERS IN MOTION 8). Frankfurt (Oder): Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION. doi: 10.11584/B-ORDERS.8.

Wille, C. & Kanesu, R. (eds.). (2020). Bordering in Pandemic Times. Insights into the COVID-19 Lockdown (UniGR-CBS Thematic Issue, vol. 4). Luxemburg: UniGR-Center for Border Studies. doi: 10.25353/ubtr-xxxx-b825-a20b.

“What’s Home Gotta Do With It?” Reflections on Homing, Bordering, and Social Distancing in Covid-19 Times (Astrid M. Fellner, Saarland University), 11/06/2020

As the lockdown to contain Covid-19 is being eased in many countries and as international travel will soon be possible again, I have the necessary distance to reflect upon what has happened in the past three months. In the hopes of ‘flattening the curve,’ we have been asked to stay home and to erect borders between ‘us’ and ‘others.’ ‘Social distancing’ has become the new buzzword. All of a sudden, we have started to hide behind the walls of our homes and we have become surrounded by borders, which now start on the thresholds of our doorsteps, extend to workplaces, cities, regions, states, and nations. How to make sense of this new ubiquity of borders? What about the new role of home turned workplace, kindergarten, school, and site of leisure activities (all at the same time)?

 

^{Figure 1 and 2: Closed German-French border in Saarbrücken. Photo: Astrid M. Fellner 7 April 2020}

 

 

Borders, Borders Everywhere

The new proliferation of borders has become especially tangible in a city which is situated on an international border. Roads dead-ending in the heart of Europe, dividing a borderlands region which has developed a dense net of cross-border cooperations and alliances: who would have thought that such a thing is possible in the Schengen area? Having grown up in the Austrian-Czech borderlands that were separated by the iron curtain and now dividing my time between here and there, I am not only deeply concerned by this recent bordering phenomenon as a Border Studies scholar, but I also feel deeply impacted and affected on a personal level. Being grounded, not being able to move freely between my two homes, I notice, has a bodily effect on me. The lockdown has locked down my body, localized it to a specific place which I now call my new home. All of a sudden, going ‘home home’ is not possible any longer (or should we say it is no longer that easy): this, I have to admit, is a new experience for me. But, as I have come to view it, it is an incredibly healthy experience, in the sense that it has allowed me to once more reflect upon my positionality and “unpack the invisible knapsack” (McIntosh 1988) of my white privilege as an upper-middle class scholar in Germany.

How can one go back to business as usual after the devastating effects of the virus, the high death toll, and the sharp and painful societal divisions that renewed bordering processes have created? The racial divide, as we can see on the news and read online on a daily basis, has split open again in the US. The border, the line of many divisions, is an “open wound” (Anzaldúa 2012 [1987], p. 25), and America is bleeding once again. The various forms of protest—also in Europe—and the declarations of solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter draw attention that racism, police oppression, and violence do not only happen in the U.S. but also in Germany. We, too, have to deal with deep social divisions, face problems with racism and Islamophobia, anti-foreigner sentiments, homophobia, sexism, and the rise of right-wing populism. As academics we have to acknowledge our own privileges in our institutions and we need to address the various forms of structural racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of inequalities in our institutions and in undergraduate and graduate programs.

 

Homing and Differential Confinement

During the first days of the lockdown, it occurred to me that I had never noticed so many homeless people in downtown Saarbrücken before. I spotted them right around the corner from where I live, rummaging through bags of groceries, which, lined up on a fence in front of Johanneskirche, had been donated to them. #Stayhome has become the new slogan. But where is home for the homeless these days? And, one might ask, is home really a safe space for everyone?

While there have been numerous charitable projects to help the homeless and there are hotlines for people who need help at home, Covid-19 has drawn the attention to the challenges of this new tendency of homing and social distancing. In migration studies, homing can refer to the “different ways of building a sense of home, of making home in constant mobility and in transnational memories” (Yapo/Boccagni 2020, p. 22). Homing, which recently has also become a life-style that was picked up by the fashion, design, and furniture industry, supposedly has been a new living idea after a phase of cocooning that had taken place after 9/11 and the general global fear of imminent threat (Berlin Online 2010). Homing also refers to the cherishing of Gemütlichkeit (Simon 2016), the quintessential German word for coziness and snugness that is untranslatable. One might argue that we are back to cocooning now, as we set up new borders between our homes and practice social distancing. And we are forced to experience a new form of homing, a retreat to the house—at least for some—which turns the home into an office space and school, dissolving the borders between Gemütlichkeit and efficiency and constituting a tremendous burden for especially single parents. In a complete lock-down situation, the border between inside and outside receives renewed importance. It becomes the transition point from which one can connect with the outside world. Thresholds, fences around houses and gardens are the new borders that separate and connect. And sometimes, windowsills become new areas for breaks from work in the home office.

 

^{Figure 3: Bags of groceries for homeless people in downtown Saarbrücken. Photo: Astrid M. Fellner 28 March 2020}

^{Figure 4: Windowsills as thresholds to the world outside. Photo: Astrid M. Fellner 19 March 2020}

In the current situation of suspended mobility in which the State (yes, it becomes capitalized again) has (re-)discovered the political-administrative power of borders as separating forces, the new discourse of home in the #Stayhome campaign often eclipses a series of problems. First of all, as we could all see in our inner cities, not everyone possesses a home or has a place to which they can withdraw to. This, however, is not a new insight. Talking about a globalized world, Zygmunt Bauman already spoke of differential mobility some years ago: “Some inhabit the globe, others are chained to place,” he said (Bauman in Beilharz 2001, p. 307). At first glance, with COVID-19, this differentiality of mobility seems halted, and situations of lockdown and quarantine apparently have forced a new common immobility onto the world. But, as it turns out, mobility is still very much differential in Covid-19 times: However, now it is the ‘disposable workforce’ who have to leave their homes, while those who can afford it, can lock themselves into their homes. The current immobility has now become rather a privilege that one needs to be able to afford rather than an enforced general order. The “mobility of labor and capital” (Sassen 1988), however, faces a challenge, as we rather experience the immobility thereof. We now live in a state of ‘differential confinement.’ The current pandemic crisis has not only created new borders between home and outside, between inside and outside, but has reinforced the borders between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor. It has also reinforced the digital divide, widening the gap between those who have access to the now necessary means of communication and those who are isolated and left behind.

 

Fear of Being at Home

Secondly, there is another problem concerning this renewed focus on home, which is inherent in the problematic nature of ‘home’ itself. Rosemary Marangoly George has stressed that the home, in general, can be viewed as “a way of establishing difference” (1999, p. 2) between those that live within the boundaries of the house or apartment and those who dwell outside. Citing Sara Ahmed, Ewa Macura-Nnamdi writes the following about acts of bordering that go along with domestic politics: “Stressing the importance of sharing a space of dwelling to the production of likeness, Ahmed also hints at a number of attributes and advantages that likeness in turn generates and on which it depends: inclusion, belonging, membership and acceptance” (2014, p. 287). The notion of home then activates the binary of in- and exclusion. And this is why the current homing tendencies reinforce social divides and contribute to a rise in tensions between those who are economically and racially privileged and those groups of people, the disenfranchised and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), who are excluded. And it is the latter group which have been affected disproportionately hard by the deadly virus.

Lastly, there is yet another problem with home. It is common knowledge that as governments have imposed lockdowns worldwide, it was these restrictions that have increased the risks associated with domestic violence, affecting primarily women, children, and LGBTQ+ individuals. A quarantine is, as Sophie Lewis has it, is “an abuser’s dream—a situation that hands near-infinite power to those with the upper hand over a home” (2020, n.p.). As a result, isolation, together with the tremendous rise of health and economic problems has globally caused an upsurge of domestic violence. As a matter of fact, for many people, going home means going back to the prison of heteronormative patriarchy. Gloria Anzaldúa had already likened the fear of going home to homophobia: “Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We’re afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture […] for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged” (2012 [1987], p. 42).
 

The Impossibility of Home

As we can see, home ‘has a lot to do with it’—that is with bordering, distancing, with violence, and, ultimately, our identities. Maybe going ‘home home’ will never be possible again, and it is the current crisis that highlights this insight. There simply is no going back. And given the conflicted meanings of home, we should not want to go back ‘home home’ anyway. Let’s hope that all borders open up again soon and we are all able to move again, move forward both in terms of traveling as well as in terms of bringing about change—a move towards a just society!
 

Astrid M. Fellner, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University
 

References

(2010). “Homing löst Cocooning ab: Das Zuhause als Mittelpunkt des sozialen Lebens: Der Wohntrend Homing braucht andere Accessoires und Möbel.” Berlin Online Dec. 22 https://www.berlin.de/special/immobilien-und-wohnen/moebel-und-design/1050679-739642-hominglöstcocooningab.html

Anzaldúa, Gloria (2012). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). 4th edition. San Francisco, Aunt Lupe Books.

Beilharz, Peter (2001). The Baumann Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lewus, Sophie (2020). “The Virus and the Home: What does the pandemic tell us about the nuclear family and the private household?” Bullybloggers March 20. https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com (Accessed 07/06/2020).

Macura-Nnamdi, Ewa (2014). “(Un)Homing Women: Domestic Politics in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion.” Affinities: Essays in Honour of Professor Tadeusz Rachwał. Ed. Agnieszka Pantuchowicz and Sławomir Masłoń. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Marangoly George, Rosemary (1999). The Politics of Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 287–303.

McIntosh, Peggy (1989). “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Peace & Freedom Magazine, 10–12.

Sassen, Saskia (1988). The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Simon, Violetta (2016). “Cocooning- und Do-it-yourself-Trend: Tyrannei der Gemütlichkeit.” Süddeutsche Zeitung Nov. 23. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/cocooning-und-do-it-yourself-trend-tyrannei-der-gemuetlichkeit-1.3253693 (07/06/2020)

Yapo S. and Boccagni P. (2020). “On the uses, functions and meanings of homing in the literature: an analysis of academic publications over time.” HOMInG Working Paper no. 7. https://erchoming.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/homing-wp-7_2020.pdf (07/06/2020)

Cross-border work force and border closures: the example of the Greater Region SaarLorLux (Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth and Estelle Evrard (University of Luxembourg), Rachid Belkacem (University of Lorraine)), 08/06/2020

Text available in French. 

Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Luxembourg
Estelle Evrard, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Luxembourg
Rachid Belkacem, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine

What has happened to our cross-border regions? Corona, Unfamiliarity and transnational borderlander activism in the Danish-German border region (Martin Klatt, University of Southern Denmark), 04/06/2020

The Covid-19 crisis has closed most of Europe’s borders, external as well as internal. But are these border closures only a temporary measure to cope with a pandemic, or do we experience a new climax of re-bordering trends in effect since 9 September 2001? For Europe specifically, this raises questions on the multi-level governance processes of the European Union and its complex system of hierarchies. It has become evident that the present crisis is the time of the nation state executive. National governments have introduced measures to limit the virus’ spread. For almost all governments this included the closure of borders from mid-March. Reopening of borders has been announced, but again not on EU level, but by national governments driven of different interests, with different priorities and different selection criteria on who is allowed in.

 

^{Figure 1: Skomagerhus border crossing closed during Covid 19. Photo: Martin Klatt 2020}

Based on Martin van der Velde’s and Bas Spiering’s theoretical framework of Unfamiliarity explaining cross-border interaction (Spierings and van der Velde 2008), this text will use observations from the Danish-German border region to illustrate processes of multilevel governance, aspects of familiarity/unfamiliarity as well as transnational borderlander and stakeholder activism in a moment of disruption and re-bordering of cross-border regions. When Denmark announced the closure of its borders for all non-Danish travelers who did not have a significant reason to be in the country (commuters actually working, permanent residents), the mayor of Germany’s border city Flensburg criticized the decision both on a factual (the virus is already in Denmark, it is more effective to isolate infected people to control it) and an emotional basis (cooperation is put on ice, the border’s 100th anniversary celebrations do not give a meaning anymore). She was supported by the German state Schleswig-Holstein’s government expressing surprise and disappointment. The same government, though, closed its southern borders to the German states of Niedersachsen, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a few days later for all touristic trips; even pedestrians and cyclists from Hamburg were denied entry the first weekend. Several stakeholders criticized the border closure, especially the two national minorities used a narrative of a lifeline being cut. This happened exactly in the 100 years anniversary of its existence – an anniversary intended to be celebrated along a narrative of reconciliation and overcoming of the border in daily life. So, do we experience a good-bye to the open border and the borderless region idyll celebrated not only in Sønderjylland-Schleswig?

 

^{Figure 2: Bandwidth of Unfamiliarity. Source: Spierings/van der Velde 2008, 502}
 

Unfamiliarity or familiarity? A continuing process

The dichotomy of Unfamiliarity/Familiarity describes the degree of the known in relation to the unknown in social contacts and interaction. It can be applied to explain interaction and flows in border- or rather cross-border regions. There are both rational and emotional differences that hinder or encourage social interaction across borders. Martin van der Velde and Bas Spierings have examined this for the field of consumer mobility in border regions (Spierings and van der Velde 2008, 2013). Other researchers have expanded the concept to other fields of cross-border interaction (Andersen 2012, 2014, de Fátima Amante 2012, Izotov and Laine 2012, Klatt 2014, 2017, Knotter 2014, Szytniewski and Spierings 2014, Yndigegn 2012). Core conclusion is that there exists a bandwidth of familiarity within which social interaction is happening. The research question as such is, how far has the bandwidth of unfamiliarity been affected of the crisis caused by Covid 19 and the different measures governments have introduced to cut back mobility, restrict movement and reinforce borders?
 

The Danish-German border region Sønderjylland-Schleswig: a narrative of reconciliation

The 100th anniversary of the drawing of the Danish-German land border, dividing the former duchy of Schleswig, is celebrated in 2020 – or rather was supposed to be. Except for a start-up conference in January 2020, all important events have been cancelled or moved into 2021. Two narratives are connected to the celebrations: “Reunification” and “Reconciliation”. Reunification accounts for Denmark having recovered parts of the territories lost in 1864. Reconciliation plays on the narrative of successful border drawing in a nationally divided territory implementing the right of national self-determination, and a subsequent accommodation of national dissenters into culturally autonomous national minorities. The reconciliation narrative, sponsored especially by the German state government of Schleswig-Holstein, suggests that the region has produced a European model of creating a society embracing unity in diversity and overcoming the divisive aspects of the state border.
 

^{Figure 3: The minorities present themselves at the Schleswig-Holstein Tag 2004 in Flensburg. Source: Institut for Grænseregionsforskning (Syddansk Universitet)}

Quick facts: what has happened?

Denmark closed the border at 12 noon on 14 March, Germany followed on 16 March. At first, only commuters, goods and the persons transporting them, and children of separated parents were allowed to cross the border. From mid-April, Denmark eased access to include parents visiting children and vice versa, as well as couples in a long-standing relationship, meaning having resided together at a time. From 18 May, Germany allowed extended family visits (children, grandparents, siblings, in-laws; all only in case of important family events). Quarantine rules were dropped for people entering from EU and EEA countries as well as from the UK. From 15 June, there will be no more entry restrictions to Germany for residents of EU, EEA and the UK. Denmark will allow tourists from Germany, Iceland and Norway to enter if they can document a hotel/campground/summer cottage booking of at least six nights; a special solution for border region residents has been announced but has not materialized yet.

 

^{Figure 4: The A7-E45 motorway crossing on 28 March 2020. Photo: Martin Klatt 2020}

Immediate issues

The border closure increased awareness on existing cross-border flows and social interaction. The euroregional office Infocenter has been confronted with many issues evolving around the closure. On social media, people have exchanged advise on facebook groups as Flensbook – for danskere i Flensborg (predominantly Danish citizens having moved to Flensburg), Arbeiten in Dänemark (predominantly Germans commuting to Denmark), Einreiseverbot Dänemark (predominantly Germans affected by the border closure) and Åbn Grænsen NU (predominantly members of the two national minorities). Cases go into details: people in the process of moving into the other country and consequences, construction of a house on the other side of the border, child custody issues, living together with a partner who has not registered his/her address, acute family crisis/separation, but also simple issues as access to farmland, a riding horse, a sailboat or machines stored on the other side of the border.

 

^{Figure 5: This farm’s driveway has been closed – it is on the border. Photo: Martin Klatt 2020}

^{Figure 6: Clear message “Closed for passage” at the Padborg border crossing. Photo: Martin Klatt 2020}

 

Conclusions: Covid 19 – renaissance of the executive

The state has returned as single actor, replacing practices of cross-border multi-level governance. Measures were taken from a state centered perspective, regarding the state as a bordered container. This implies the original exceptions allowed for border crossings: they were seen in a critical infrastructure framework. Later easing included social aspects, too. But even the opening for tourism was effectuated because of domestic political pressure from the tourism industry.

Furthermore, a national rhetoric has dominated government statements especially in Denmark. Warlike by naming Covid 19 Denmark’s worst crisis since the traumatic German occupation in WW II. By focus on national solidarity (talking about Danes and naming the threat as foreign). Especially Sweden’s different course in fighting the pandemic was antagonized rhetorically. When the Danish prime minister presented her government’s original four phase plan to reopen Danish society, opening the borders was not even on the agenda of phase four.  

 

^{Figure 7: The parking lot at Fleggaard, the largest border supermarket, on Maundy Thursday. A holiday in Denmark, but not in Germany, it usually is the day with the highest turnover of the year! Photo: Martin Klatt 2020}

 

Outlook: challenges of reopening

Cross-border cooperation within Euroregion Sønderjylland-Schleswig has been set on stand-by mode. Deeper issues on built up trust and familiarity are at stake. Business in the border region is hit severly: this applies to regional tourism, but especially to the cross-border shopping business in South Schleswig. Especially the Danish minority’s relation to its kin-state have been damaged. The minority did not feel being taken into account by neither Denmark’s border closure, nor the reopening plan.

The Danish-German cross-border region might have to start from anew. Following the Unfamiliarity concept, it must be assumed that the emotional differences have changed by symbolic and actual re-bordering. Incentives to engage in cross-border cooperation will move away from a constructivist cross-border region approach to exploiting rational differences. On the other hand, Covid 19 has demonstrated the existing high interaction on business and personal level, as well as the density of multiple flows and social interaction across the border.
 

Martin Klatt, Centre for Border Region Studies, University of Southern Denmark
 

References

Andersen, Dorte Jagetić. 2012. "Exploring the Concept of (Un)familiarity: (Un)familiarity in Border Practices and Identity-Formation at the Slovenian–Croatian Border on Istria."  European Planning Studies 21 (1):42-57. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2012.716238.

Andersen, Dorte Jagetić. 2014. "Do if you Dare: Reflections on (Un)familiarity, Identity-Formation and Ontological Politics."  Journal of Borderlands Studies:1-11. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2014.938966.

de Fátima Amante, Maria. 2012. "Recovering the Paradox of the Border: Identity and (Un)familiarity Across the Portuguese–Spanish Border."  European Planning Studies 21 (1):24-41. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2012.716237.

Izotov, Alexander, and Jussi Laine. 2012. "Constructing (Un)familiarity: Role of Tourism in Identity and Region Building at the Finnish–Russian Border."  European Planning Studies 21 (1):93-111. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2012.716241.

Klatt, Martin. 2014. "(Un)Familiarity? Labor Related Cross-Border Mobility in Sønderjylland/Schleswig Since Denmark Joined the EC in 1973."  Journal of Borderlands Studies 29 (3):353-373. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2014.938968.

Klatt, Martin. 2017. "Dybbøl 2014. Constructing Familiarity by Remembrance?" In European Borderlands. Living with Bridges and Barriers, edited by Elisabeth Boesen and Gregor Schnuer, 30-46. Milton Park: Routledge.

Knotter, Ad. 2014. "Prespectives on Cross-Border Labor in Europe: "(Un)familiarity" or "Push-and-Pull"?"  Journal of Borderlands Studies 29 (3):319-326. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2014.938972.

Spierings, Bas, and Martin van der Velde. 2008. "Shopping, Borders and Unfamiliarity: Consumer Mobility in Europe."  Journal for Economic and Social Geography 99 (4):497-505.

Spierings, Bas, and Martin van der Velde. 2013. "Cross-Border Differences and Unfamiliarity: Shopping Mobility in the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal Euroregion."  European Planning Studies 21 (1):5-23. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2012.716236.

Szytniewski, Bianca, and Bas Spierings. 2014. "Encounters with Otherness: Implications of (Un)familiarity for Daily Life in Borderlands."  Journal of Borderlands Studies 29 (3):339-351. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2014.938971.

Yndigegn, Carsten. 2012. "Reviving Unfamiliarity—The Case of Public Resistance to the Establishment of the Danish–German Euroregion."  European Planning Studies 21 (1):58-74. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2012.716239.

COVID-19 in the borderland of San Diego and Tijuana: between re-bordering processes and contradictory realities (Albert Roßmeier, University of Tübingen/Saarland University), 04/06/2020

My research interest lies fundamentally at the intersection of urban landscape research and border studies. Within my dissertation I focus on the San Diego-Tijuana border region, which has changed in certain ways before my eyes in the course of the last weeks. Not only in the context of the rise of COVID-19 have I been able to witness and research the emergence of numerous borders and distinctions in this special setting (Roßmeier 2020). To order my findings and the following lines, these borders are assigned to three levels (Breitung 2011): spatial, social and political, on which far-reaching upheavals can be observed since March 2020. Accordingly, the following thoughts are presenting my recent observations on the complex border shifts and new demarcations as well as on the constituting, various realities on the ground. Thus, initial questions arising from the corona pandemic and other relevant events for the geographical consideration of borders can be addressed.
 

Border processes on the spatial level

On the spatial level, the national border between the US and Mexico should of course be mentioned at the outset. Outside the local context this border is primarily perceived as a strictly guarded and hardly surmountable dividing line, but is locally much more perforated and interwoven (Kühne and Schönwald 2015). Although certain connecting aspects of the US-Mexican border are currently being strengthened, the border region is experiencing a certain separation in the course of measures to contain the coronavirus in the sense of re-bordering (Newman 2006; Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002). In the course of the cross-border cooperation for the supra-regional fight against the coronavirus, which was decided on March 18, the regional-political governance is being strengthened. The border region is thus being approached politically as a metropolitan region that belongs together, and is moving a little in this direction, theoretically in the sense of de-bordering. On the other hand, however, there is the decision of March 21 to restrict border traffic to essential travel, which denies people crossing the border without the appropriate papers or certificates. While daily crossing is possible with a tourist visa, which was also the rule in many cases, the border is currently closing a little more for the relevant borderland citizens and putting individual cross-border connections on ice.

In addition, also the regional dimension offers borders relevant to everyday life in San Diego County. While the county’s areas are largely divided into suburban and urban areas in the population’s everyday life or are understood as spatial units between structural elements such as highways (in the sense of a spatial ‘ordering’ and ‘othering’; Roßmeier 2020), current differentiations are taking place in a similar kind: in a north-south demarcation between the northern county, which is less affected by COVID-19, and the southern county, which is more affected, or between San Diego and Tijuana itself (County of San Diego 2020b; Voice of San Diego May 4, 2020).

In this sense, small-scale distinctions of neighborhoods (Iossifova 2015; Liao et al. 2018) or zip code areas are also gaining in relevance with regard to new case numbers (County of San Diego 2020c) or the interpretation of areas as risk areas, thus leading to the drawing of individual-imaginary boundaries or the emergence of psychological borders (Breitung 2011, p. 57). At the level of neighborhoods, questions of accessibility are becoming increasingly relevant. In the times of the corona pandemic, differentiations are taking place with special reference to access to medical care or food.

 

^{Figure 1: The bridge pillars of the Coronado Bay Bridge and the Interstate I-5 in today's Chicano Park in San Diego: on the one hand a symbol of spatial appropriation of the Mexican-American community, on the other hand a sharp divide and borderline between downtown and the neighborhoods of Southeast San Diego, which are characterized by a lack of symbolic capital. Source: Albert Roßmeier 2019}
 

Border processes on the social level

This already introduces the social level of borders in the San Diego-Tijuana area. Within (b)ordering and othering processes (Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002), the corona pandemic has led to even more social demarcations with relevance to everyday life. I assume that existing discourses about certain groups are being expanded by disease-related aspects, and that adapted attributions and interpretations are taking place, leading to individual and social inclusion and exclusion. In terms of border theory, the fundamental questions are who draws which borders on the basis of which attributions and which borders arise for whom or which group. With regard to the coronavirus outbreak, the question can be asked in border theoretical thinking who is most affected by the pandemic on the basis of which borders and how these borders can be overcome. At least the question of who is affected by the pandemic can be answered quite clearly with the help of current local figures and in view of the tensions that are currently erupting in many US cities, revealing alarming disparities between ethnic groups (County of San Diego 2020a).
 

Border processes on the political level

The political dimension is stated as the third level of the multi-layered demarcations of the San Diego-Tijuana border area. In this dimension, (political) units can be differentiated on the basis of guidelines, regulations or associations and cooperations, which in turn have or can obtain everyday relevance. While different political approaches lead to the formation of different entities in space, distinctions can be eliminated by cross-border governance (Crossey 2020) at all levels of scale. California's history of numerous incorporated cities contributes to further distinctions at the political level–San Diego counts 18 incorporated cities. With regard to the corona pandemic, a cross-border cooperation was established for the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan region on March 18 to combat the spread of the virus. What both sides of the national border are currently less in agreement on, however, is the question of what is to be regarded as essential and thus carried on during the pandemic. As a result of the lockdown imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on March 19 and in Mexico on March 26, certain sectors of the economy on both sides of the border are closing down partially or completely. While food and health care are among the essential fields in Mexico, the US includes the aerospace and defense industries. The US ambassador to Mexico and the US government are pushing for a reopening of the maquiladoras (Deutsche Welle Akademie May 5, 2020), although there are local concerns about a further spread of the virus. Despite this, numerous maquiladoras on Mexico’s northern border appear to have been open until Mid-April–contrary to local and national guidelines (Deutsche Welle April 29, 2020).

Ultimately, certain upheavals are evident at all three border levels–spatial, social and political–which can be interpreted as re-bordering processes. In some cases, new borders are being drawn while older borders erode, and new distinctions are taking place at neighborhood, regional and national levels, differentiating and demarcating spaces and groups. It can be assumed that this is leading to different border realities, as described below.
 

Timeline of relevant events

In the following, the rapid upheavals in the San Diego-Tijuana border region in connection with global developments and international dependencies are dated in a timeline:
 

• March 11, 2020 (effective March 14, 2020): Presidential proclamation regarding travel restrictions from the Schengen Area
• March 12, 2020: Temporary closure of six vehicle lanes at the San Ysidro border crossing
• March 18, 2020: San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer stating “COVID-19 knows no boundaries” and stressing the importance of cross-border cooperation with Mexican officials regarding the corona pandemic
• March 19, 2020: Proclamation by Gov. Gavin Newsom regarding the stay-at-home order for all individuals living in the State of California
• March 21, 2020: US-Mexico border closed to nonessential travels until at least June 22. Commerce has been allowed to continue.
• March 26, 2020: Suspending of all but essential activities by the Mexican government
• April 5, 2020: PedWest Crossing at the San Ysidro border crossing temporarily closed, all pedestrian processing occurs at the PedEast facility
• End of April through Mid of May, 2020: Anti-lockdown protests at several locations in San Diego County and throughout the US
• End of April, 2020: Factory workers in Tijuana protested for the closure of the maquiladoras and against the hazardous working conditions in the factories
• May 12, 2020: Mayor Kevin Faulconer released a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom calling the current criteria needed to re-open California unrealistic
• May 21, 2020: San Diego County enters Phase 2 of 4 of the “Resilience Roadmap” established by Gov. Gavin Newsom to gradually reopen California
• May 25, 2020: Mistreatment and violent killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis (Minnesota) by four Minneapolis Police Department officers

 

^{Figure 2: The vehicle lanes of the San Ysidro border crossing in Tijuana. Source: Albert Roßmeier 2019}

COVID-19 knows no boundaries–but society does

With the new demarcations, distinctions and the ordering and othering in the border region, the question arises, which realities are currently emerging? Which interpretations and constructions are gaining power locally and which discourses are manifesting themselves (Weber 2020)? Do certain discursive camps emerge in the process that vie for the sovereignty of interpretation? In particular, ethnic differentiations and (resulting) conflicts as well as different border realities seem to play a major role here.

In the early stages of the spread of the coronavirus, Asian-Americans increasingly experience the loss of social recognition–the rhetoric of President Donald Trump implies that they are the carriers of the coronavirus, because it is believed to originate from China. From the end of April to mid-May, anti-lockdown protests are taking place in many parts of the US, including San Diego. These protests are mainly composed of sections of the white population, Trump voters and right-wing groups and call into question the drastic nature of the novel virus. In addition, San Diego is differentiated along an east-west axis: the northern county, which is largely inhabited by the white population, contrasts with the southern county, which is characterized by ethnic diversity, in terms of the current figures of new COVID-19 cases. South Bay, Otay Mesa and other communities in the southern county are thus constructed as ‘dangerous’ places where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly.

Protests are also taking place in northern Mexico, in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, which are more severely affected by the virus (Voice of San Diego May 4, 2020). Local workers of the maquiladoras protest against the hazardous working conditions and for the closure of the factories. While the US government demands that the factories continue to operate, the local population fears a further spread of the virus–the realities at the different levels are far apart.

However, the most drastic manifestation in many cities in the US and in San Diego currently is the tensions that are being erupted in outrage at the death of George Floyd. On May 25, the passer-by footage of the violent killing of a black man by four police officers of the Minneapolis Police Department appeared in the news. Since then, daily protests against racist actions by the US police departments and structural injustice against the black population are taking place. In many places, the protests unfold devastating vandalism, looting and further police violence, and are reminiscent of the so-called LA Riots of 1992. Here, too, border theoretical thinking can help to classify the current events: the conditions denounced by the protesters are based on unjustified distinctions, on ordering and othering processes that draw sharp border lines between different groups in the US-american society and thereby produce different realities with the hardest everyday relevance. The boundaries produced and the realities arising from them are interdependent, and this is currently becoming apparent with all its violence and brutality.

 

Albert Roßmeier, Doctoral Candidate, University of Tübingen and Saarland University

 

References

Breitung, W. (2011). Borders and the City: Intra-Urban Boundaries in Guangzhou (China). Quaestiones Geographicae, 30 (4), 55-61. doi:10.2478/v10117-011-0038-5

County of San Diego. (2020a). Daily 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Race/Ethnicity Summary.  https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/Epidemiology/COVID-19%20Race%20and%20Ethnicity%20Summary.pdf. Accessed: June 2, 2020.

County of San Diego. (2020b). Daily Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Confirmed Cases by City of Residence Map.  https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/Epidemiology/COVID-19%20City%20of%20Residence_MAP.pdf. Accessed: June 2, 2020.

County of San Diego. (2020c). Daily Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Summary of Cases by Zip Code of Residence.  https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/Epidemiology/COVID-19%20Summary%20of%20Cases%20by%20Zip%20Code.pdf. Accessed: June 2, 2020.

Crossey, N. (2020). Corona – neue Herausforderungen und Perspektiven für Grenzraumpolitiken und grenzüberschreitende Governance. BorderObs (08/04/20), UniGR-Center for Border Studies. http://BorderObs.BorderStudies.org. Accessed: June 3, 2020.

Deutsche Welle. (April 29, 2020). Betriebe in Mexiko ignorieren Corona-Auflagen - auch auf US-Druck.  https://www.dw.com/de/betriebe-in-mexiko-ignorieren-corona-auflagen-auch-auf-us-druck/a-53276940. Accessed: June 2, 2020.

Deutsche Welle Akademie. (May 5, 2020). Gegen das Schweigen: Mexikanische Lokalmedien schaffen Transparenz in der Corona-Krise.  https://www.dw.com/de/gegen-das-schweigen-mexikanische-lokalmedien-schaffen-transparenz-in-der-corona-krise/a-53332707. Accessed: June 2, 2020.

Iossifova, D. (2015). Borderland urbanism: seeing between enclaves. Urban Geography, 36 (1), 90-108.

Kühne, O. & Schönwald, A. (2015). San Diego: Eigenlogiken, Widersprüche und Hybriditäten in und von ‚America ́s finest city‘. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Liao, K., Breitung, W. & Wehrhahn, R. (2018). Debordering and rebordering in the residential borderlands of suburban Guangzhou. Urban Geography, 39 (7), 1092-1112.

Newman, D. (2006). Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue. European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2), 171-186.

Roßmeier, A. (2020). Hybrid Urban Borderlands. Von der Hybridität intra-urbaner Grenzen in der internationalen Metropolregion San Diego. In F. Weber, C. Wille, B. Caesar & J. Hollstegge (Eds.), Geographien der Grenzen. Räume – Ordnungen – Verflechtungen. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, forthcoming.

Van Houtum, H. & Van Naerssen, T. (2002). Bordering, Ordering and Othering. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 93 (2), 125-136.

Voice of San Diego. (May 4, 2020). Border Report: 'Tijuana Is Facing a Different Kind of Crisis'.  https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/border-report-tijuana-is-facing-a-different-kind-of-crisis/. Accessed: June 2, 2020.

Weber, F. (2020). Das Coronavirus und die Erosion von Gewissheit. BorderObs (06/04/20), UniGR-Center for Border Studies. http://BorderObs.BorderStudies.org. Accessed: June 3, 2020.

 

Closure of national borders: stories in the cross-border border region (Beate Caesar, Nicolas Dorkel, Sylvain Marbehant, Hélène Rouchet, Greta Szendrei), 02/06/2020

Text available in French. 

Working Group Spatial Planning of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies:

Beate Caesar, Fachgebiet Internationale Planungssysteme, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern
Nicolas Dorkel, LOTERR – Centre de recherche en géographie, Université de Lorraine
Sylvain Marbehant, LEPUR – Centre de Recherche sur la Ville, le Territoire et le Milieu rural, University of Liège
Hélène Rouchet, LEPUR – Centre de Recherche sur la Ville, le Territoire et le Milieu rural, University of Liège
Greta Szendrei, Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg

Refugee accommodations and camps as border paradigm: Life Realities in Times of the Corona pandemic (Claudia Böhme and Anett Schmitz, University of Trier), 02/06/2020

The "refugee camp" border paradigm:  forms of new border practices

The global spread of Coronavirus has resulted in a global curtailment of mobility as well as in territorial and social boundary drawing processes (Wille 2020), which are visible everywhere in the public realm. New borders are being drawn and existing ones hardened (Cyrus/Ulrich 2020) (Abb. 1, 2).

^{Fig. 1: Fenced off playground, photo: Christoph Dehmelt 2020}

^{Fig. 2: Distance marking in a supermarket, photo: Sarah Schug 2020}

The closing of national state borders and the concentration on one's own "nation" has had especially dramatic consequences for the realities of life for migrants and refugees. The current situation therefore brings into focus the debate on national state border closures, the EU's fortress Europe policy with regard to its external borders as well as refugee accommodation centres and camps as border paradigms (Fig. 3).

 

^{Fig. 3: Graffiti near Trier main railway station, photo: Julia Binder 2020}

Although political and media attention in the EU is directed at the management of the pandemic and the protection of "at-risk groups" in the individual countries, the situation of refugees at the EU's external borders is in danger of being overlooked. The "camp" paradigm represents, with the spatial and social separation of the camp residents from their home societies, a border practice. This is accompanied by extensive controls over participation in social systems and exclusion from the jobs market, regular healthcare and the housing market. Integration into society and contact with the local population remain limited (Schmitz/Schönhuth 2020, 48).

As ambivalent border spaces, however, refugee accommodation centres are also dynamic, active spaces, in which residents create, negotiate and transform "culture, "home" and "belonging", in order to make an (albeit) preliminary home for themselves. They establish formalised and informal support structures and networks, forms of agency (Schmitz/Schönhuth 2020, 49). As "quasi-total institutions" (ibid.), these forms of accommodation are, however, also characterised by their structurally and institutionally determined situations of conflict and violence, which have been further exacerbated in the wake of the pandemic.

 

Refugee accommodation in Germany

As we were able to observe during our long-term field research project before and during the pandemic in various refugee accommodation centres, it is not uncommon for refugees to share a 12-14 sqm bedroom with several other people (Schönhuth/Schmitz/Böhme 2019). Under such conditions social distancing is impossible. The use of shared kitchen and bathroom facilities and the fixed times for food distribution and the use of showers inevitably entail contact with other people.  The reaction of the people who run refugee accommodation centres to the coronavirus is manifested in the adoption of new border practices: within the centres boundaries are moved, tightened and newly marked out. With (in)visible boundary markings, a new social reality is created in the accommodation centres. The already regimented everyday life of the residents is now subject to even more controls. New visible boundaries are "separation rooms" for infection cases or areas cordoned off with barriers to quarantine new arrivals. Recreation rooms are closed and leisure activities cancelled. The boundaries between staff and residents are being redefined with the introduction of distance markings. This also is also leading to tighter social controls and mistrust between residents out of fear of being infected with the virus. This then generates new areas of conflict and boundary drawing processes between those who accept the new rules and those who reject them.

The difficult situation and perspectives of the residents only rarely come to the attention of the public. There are shortages of respirators, gloves, disinfectants and soap (Riese et al. 2020a). Refugees also complain of the lack of information on the virus and the measures to take protect against infection as well as insensitive treatment by security staff (e.g. Süddeutsche Zeitung 2020). Protests and conflicts with the security services are on the rise (Riese 2020b). In May 2020 more and more refugee accommodation centres were placed in quarantine, because they were seeing more and more cases of Covid-19 (MiGAZIN 2020), which reinforced the feeling of powerless and isolation among the residents.

The managements of the centres are faced with the challenge of whether and how communal living in a mass accommodation centre can be made safe against the background of the pandemic.  Decentralised accommodation – for instance in leisure centres – has in fact been organised for individual infected and vulnerable people, but has not been implemented nationwide or for all those concerned (e.g. Stieber, 2020). Existing protection measures, such as those that were developed as part of the "Minimum protection standards for refugees in refugee accommodation centres" initiative (BMFSFJ/UNICEF 2018), have reached their limits during the pandemic.

 

The Moria camp on Lesbos

The closure of the borders because of the pandemic has especially aggravated the living conditions in the hotspots and camps in North African and in the Mediterranean.  Necessary evacuation measures have been stopped and the harbours where rescue ships landed refugees have been closed. As a result of the media and politicians' concentration on their "own crises", the existing crisis for migrants is at risk of being lost from view. It is alliances of bodies from civil society that are calling attention to the worsening living conditions during the pandemic in the camps and on the Greek islands and who are demanding that the EU take action (AG Migration, among others, 2020; Ziegler 2020). The #LeaveNoOneBehind campaign is demanding the immediate evacuation of the camps.

In May 2020, however, no improvement in the living conditions in these intermediate places created by the border regime was in sight. At this juncture the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, with its reception capacity of 3,000 refugees, but now housing about 20,000, is already regarded as the "shame of Europe" (Ziegler, 2020). The former military camp is enclosed by a high metal fence, but many refugees are living in the meantime in slum-like dwellings in the olive groves outside the fencing. People are living in containers, tents or in shacks they have built themselves. A sufficient supply of food and drinking water, medicines, sanitary facilities, dustbins and safe living spaces is not guaranteed. Quarrels, violent conflicts (sometimes fatal), fires and sexual and racial assaults make for a life-threatening situation (Backhaus 2020; Ziegler 2020).

 

Social distancing is not possible under such conditions; quarantine measures are not feasible against a background of only one hospital.

In the meantime, the first cases of Covid-19 have been detected in the Moria camp, which is hindering the provision of general medical care. Even before the pandemic eight EU States had already said that they would take 1,600 especially vulnerable children and youths off the Greek islands and to Europe; however, this plan was postponed as a result of the border closures connected to the pandemic. In April 2020 Germany finally took 47 and Luxemburg twelve children and youths aged up to 17 (NDR 2020). While humanitarian organisations like "Doctors without Borders" and civil actors are demanding the complete evacuation of the camps, so far only selected elderly people and families are being taken to the Greek mainland. According to media reports, new arrivals are being placed in quarantine for two weeks in the north of the island (Bormann, 2020). In May 2020 residents on Moria have already made a public call for action for the second time, and are demanding support from the EU, the governments of European countries and civil society (Moria Camp, 2020).

"Kakuma Refugee Camp" and "Kalobeyei Settlement" in Kenya

Another border paradigm is the "Kakuma Refugee Camp" and "Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement" in Kenya, which Claudia Böhme has visited and where she has conducted interviews with residents (Böhme, 2019). With a population that has now reached almost 200,000 people (March 2020) from over 20 countries with diverse political, social and economic structures, the camp is more like an "accidental city"(Jansen, 2018).

The refugee camp in situated in a marginalised part of north-west Kenya about 130 km from the South Sudan border in a region subject to extreme climate conditions (UNHCR Kenya 2018). The majority of the local population are Turkana, nomadic pastoralists who also have difficulty accessing vital resources This leads to violent conflicts with neighbouring groups and strained relations with the camp dwellers (Aukot, 2003, 74; Böhme, 2019; Jansen, 2016).

Life in "Kakuma Refugee Camp" is shaped by the hope of a life beyond the confines of the camp, which is promised by participation in an overseas resettlement programme (Jansen, 2018). But in the middle of March all resettlement measures were halted due to the coronavirus crisis. And so the dream of Somali Jamilah, who lives in the camp with her two sisters and who had a chance of going to Germany, has burst (Böhme, 2020). On 20 March the first case of Covid-19 was reported near the camp. Security forces had stopped a Somali returning from USA on his way to Kakuma and he was showing symptoms of the virus (Lutta, 2020). Since then, Jamilah and her two sisters, one of whom has asthma, have been trying to stay inside their small compound. Their former fellow camp dweller Fazilah from South Sudan, who was born in the camp, shares her concern about the residents' health on Facebook along with an appeal for donations for sanitary goods. One post on her Facebook shows how people deal creatively with the lack of hygiene measures (Fig. 4).

^{Fig. 4: Brando Atiol, a young schoolboy (6th grade) at the Jebel Marra Primary School in the Kakuma Refugee Camp washes his hands at a canister which he has converted into a tap with a soap dispenser above. Photo: Okello Joseph 2020}

^{Fig. 5: Kakuma practise social distancing while waiting for their food rations. Photo: UNHCR/Otieno 2020
(https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/4/5e8c28c44/unhcr-stepping-coronavirus-prevention-measures-displaced-across-east-horn.html)}

On 24 March a radio station reported on how Muslim residents were praying against the spread of the virus (REF FM Community Radio, 2020). Schools and social facilities have closed, residents are required to stay within their accommodation, as the national curfew applies from 7 pm to 9 am.  The Covid lockdown has caused shortages of supplies of food and medical items for the camp (Rodgers, 2020). The first safety measures were introduced (UNHCR 2020) (Fig. 5).

On 25 May the camp was closed to all arrivals and departures due to a case of Covid-19 among the residents (Nation TV, 9 pm news, 25.05.2020).

 

Post-Corona: resolution of border paradigms?

We have demonstrated in this article the extent to which the "refugee camp" border paradigm has seen another dimension added as a result of the pandemic. The "Camp", already positioned on the fringes of society and characterised by cramped living conditions, social boundaries, conflicts and a lack of any future prospects, is not given sufficient consideration in the current debates on protection against the pandemic taking place at nation-state level. Refugees' already marginalised living circumstances are therefore made even harder, and once again the question is raised as to whether the living conditions of the people concerned can be fundamentally changed. This touches on questions relating to how to deal with global inequality and requires consideration of and research on how people can be protected in global emergencies regardless of their nationality and living conditions. The coronavirus pandemic could therefore offer a chance to rethink the existing protection concepts and try alternative forms of accommodation.

 

Claudia Böhme, Department Sociology/Ethnology, University of Trier

Anett Schmitz, Department Sociology/Ethnology, University of Trier

 

References

Arbeitsgruppe Migration, Arbeitsgruppe Public Anthropology und Regionalgruppe Europa der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (DGSKA) (2020), Für eine menschenrechtskonforme europäische Migrationspolitik während der COVID-19 Pandemie, https://www.dgska.de/fuer-eine-menschenrechtskonforme-europaeische-migrationspolitik/, Abruf: 13.5.2020.

Aukot, Ekuru (2003), "It Is Better to Be a Refugee Than a Turkana in Kakuma": Revisiting the Relationship between Hosts and Refugees in Kenya. Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 21 (3), 73–83.

Backhaus, Andrea (2020), "Moria ist die Hölle", Zeit Online, 27.3.2020, https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2020-03/lesbos-fluechtlingslager-moria-griechenland-gefluechtete, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

BMFSFJ/UNICEF (2018), "Mindeststandards zum Schutz von geflüchteten Menschen in Flüchtlingsunterkünften" https://www.bmfsfj.de/bmfsfj/service/publikationen/mindeststandards-zum-schutz-von-gefluechteten-menschen-in-fluechtlingsunterkuenften/117474, Abruf: 28.5.2020.

Böhme, Claudia (2019), "The Illusion of Being a Free Spirit" – Mobile Phones and Social Media in Transit Places of Migration with the Example of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, Stichproben-Vienna journal of African studies, 36 (19), 51–74.

Bormann, Thomas (2020), Corona-Gefahr auf Lesbos. Masken für Moria, Tagesschau Online, 7.4.2020, https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/fluechtlinge-lesbos-corona-101.html, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

Cyrus, Norbert; Ulrich, Peter (2020), Das Corona-Virus und die Grenzforschung: in: Grenzen und Ordnungen in Bewegung in Zeiten der Corona-Krise. Analysen zu Region und Gesellschaft. Ein Blog des Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, https://bordersinmotion-coronablog.com, Abruf: 28.5.2020

Jansen, Bram J. (2016), The Refugee Camp as Warscape: Violent Cosmologies, Rebelization, and Humanitarian Governance in Kakuma, Kenya, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 7 (3), 429–441.

Jansen, Bram J. (2018), Kakuma Refugee Camp: Humanitarian Urbanism in Kenya's Accidental City, London.

Lutta, Sammy (2020), Covid-19 scare: four isolated at Kakuma camp, Daily Nation Online, 20.3.2020, https://www.nation.co.ke/counties/turkana/Covid-19-scare-Kakuma-refugees-isolated-Turkana-hospital/1183330-5498006-vrokkt/index.html, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

MiGAZIN (2020): Corona. Immer mehr Flüchtlingsunterkünfte komplett in Quarantäne, https://www.migazin.de/2020/04/21/corona-immer-mehr-fluechtlingsunterkuenfte-komplett-in-quarantaene/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MiGLETTER, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

Moria Camp (2020), Second Call from Moria Camp in Corona Times, taz Online, 10.5.2020, https://taz.de/pdf/Statement_from_Moria_10_5.pdf, Abruf: 13.5.2020.

Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) (2020), Osnabrück: 47 Flüchtlingskinder sind wohlauf, https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/osnabrueck_emsland/Osnabrueck-47-Fluechtlingskinder-sind-wohlauf,fluechtlingskinder190.html, Abruf: 28.4.2020.

REF FM Community Radio (2020), Online 24.3.2020, https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/b7ed4402/files/uploaded/Santos%2027.mp3?fbclid=IwAR1JugFduGVYX5z51YMYsZb7egvoOeNZoMMhDfunRUU8tHOzDvfGRCFlLNk, Abruf: 13.5.2020

Riese, Dinah et al. (2020a), Schutz vor Corona für Geflüchtete: Zu sechst ein Zimmer, keine Seife, taz Online, 2.4.2020, https://taz.de/Schutz-vor-Corona-fuer-Gefluechtete/!5673786/, Abruf: 13.5.2020.

Riese, Dinah (2020b), Protest in Flüchtlingsunterkunft. Aufbegehren gegen Quarantäne, taz Online, 5.4.2020, https://taz.de/Protest-in-Fluechtlingsunterkunft/!5673607/, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

Rodgers, Cory (2020), COVID-19 has Kenyan refugee camp on edge, The New Humanitarian Online, 14.4.2020, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/04/14/kenya-kakuma-refugee-camp-coronavirus, Abruf: 13.5.2020.

Schmitz, Anett; Schönhuth, Michael (2020), Zwischen Macht, Ohnmacht und Agency: Beschwerdemanagement für Geflüchtete, Zeitschrift Migration und Soziale Arbeit, (1), 46-56.

Schönhuth Michael; Schmitz Anett; Böhme Claudia (2019), Beschwerdemanagement für Geflüchtete in den Aufnahmeeinrichtungen für Asylbegehrende. Abschlussbericht (im Erscheinen)

Stieber, Benno (2020), Flüchtlingsunterkünfte in Quarantäne. »Sie fühlen sich abgeschnitten«, taz Online, 15.4.2020, https://taz.de/Fluechtlingsunterkuenfte-in-Quarantaene/!5678995/, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

Süddeutsche Zeitung (2020), Verdachtsfälle in Flüchtlingsunterkünften, Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, 15.3.2020, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/coronavirus-verdachtsfaelle-in-fluechtlingsunterkuenften-1.4842921, Abruf: 12.04.2020.

UNHCR Kenia (2018), Kakuma Refugee Camp & Kalobeyei. Visitors Guide. https://www.unhcr.org/ke/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/UNHCR-Sub-Office-Kakuma-Visitors-Guide.pdf, Abruf: 13.5.2020.

UNHCR Kenia (2020), Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement. https://www.unhcr.org/ke/kakuma-refugee-camp, Abruf: 13.5.2020.

UNHCR (2020), UNHCR stepping up coronavirus prevention measures for displaced across East, Horn and Great Lakes region of Africa, Report 7.4.2020, https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/4/5e8c28c44/unhcr-stepping-coronavirus-prevention-measures-displaced-across-east-horn.html, Abruf: 12.5.2020.

Wille, Christian (2020), Borders in Times of Covid-19 / Grenzen in Zeiten von Covid-19. BorderObs, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, http://BorderObs.BorderStudies.org, Abruf: 28.5.2020.

Ziegler, Jean (2020), Die Schande Europas. Von Flüchtlingen und Menschenrechten. München: C. Bertelsmann.

 

Text available in German. 

Coronavirus, Social Boundaries and Food Security: Observations in Jamaica (Lisa Johnson, University of Trier), 14/05/20

Jamaican traditional herb knowledge: thinking beyond the border of Western medicine

The coronavirus has changed our sense of personal vulnerability profoundly; the fear of getting sick has urged people around the world to rethink their day-to-day interactions with fellow human beings, their hygiene rituals, their health precautions. Countless recommendations from doctors and sometimes-absurd theories from nutritionists and health gurus on how to support the immune system against the virus flooded media channels immediately after the discovery of the disease. While Germany´s official health authorities are hoping for a medical breakthrough in vaccine against COVID-19, a survivor of the infectious disease may already have found an effective, over-the-counter alternative for its treatment. After the Jamaican doctor Raeburn Fairweather, who lives in New York City, tested positive for Corona in early April, his story went viral. The 47-year-old told the New York Post that he had treated high fever, headache, severe cough and the loss of his sense of smell and taste with traditional Caribbean herbal teas and home remedies made from turmeric, garlic and ginger. The interview with the recovered Fairweather quickly became popular in social media channels, and was well received by the Jamaican community at large.

In Jamaica, the knowledge about plant-based healing techniques has a longstanding tradition. Alternative perspectives on health maintenance through the usage of certain food products and plants that introduce other cosmologies into the current hegemonic Western discourse on Corona. Fifty percent of all listed medicinal plants grow on the Caribbean island, and the range of corresponding healing methods is enormous.Through the crisis, this knowledge seems to experience a revival, and illustrates at the same time the socio-economic boundaries many Jamaicans face in their limited access to the healthcare system. Especially people in poorer or rural areas still rely on the advice of religious and secular healers.

Herbal remedies are not only effective, but also inexpensive. The reality is that many Jamaicans cannot afford the cost of a doctor’s visit. While modern health facilities are out of reach for many, herbal medicine and traditional healing knowledge is booming whenever there is a health crisis. The knowledge about the use of medicinal plants is a historical amalgam of cultural influences from the indigenous Taino, enslaved Africans, European settlers and guest workers from China and India, who have shaped life on the island over the last five centuries. Handed down stories by grandmothers about the usage of vegetation such as Moringa, Irish Moss, Cerasse or Kolanut can be found in the verses of Jamaican nursery rhymes and songs by numerous musical artists. The government suppressed traditional wisdom of West African influenced folk medicine severely after the end of slavery in favour of evidence-based Western treatment concepts. The Coronavirus, however, forces government officials to look anew into all possible solutions for a cure of the disease and breaks up the borders between conventional medicine and naturopathy or “bush” medicine. In times of Corona, natural remedies that where once demonized are now literally on everyone's lips.

 

^{Fig. 1: Moringa tree}

^{Fig. 2: Empty tourist beach}

The Lockdown Effects

In contrast to Germany, Jamaica reacted quite quickly and drastically with a lockdown in mid-March after the first imported COVID-19 case. Those who could still enter the island had to spend 14 days in domestic quarantine, while empty planes collected the last stranded tourists from the Caribbean island. The tourism industry is the important economic force in Jamaica that accounts for over fifty percent of all foreign exchange earnings. Now the borders are closed, the tourists are staying away and the cruise ships are not allowed into the harbours anymore. Governmental measures to contain the virus spread have paralyzed the tourism and the labour market. Corona plunges Jamaica into an existential crisis. It fundamentally calls into question its previous idea of economic development. One third of the population works directly or indirectly in the tourism sector. Thousands of people lost their jobs without any prospect of emergency aid. The socio-economic system railed off track since Jamaica is completely cut off from the rest of the world due to the lockdown, which effects import – export businesses, delivery delays and difficulties for commuters.

It also effects socio-cultural connections to Jamaicans in North America. In times of crisis, financial aid often comes from the emigrants in the diaspora who support their local families. Now this socio-cultural ‘insurance’ through remittances expires in the course of Corona.
As the world is simultaneously in crisis, relatives in the US, UK or Canada also find their livelihoods in a precarious state and the possibility of sending money dwindles. Until a vaccine or drug against COVID-19 will be found, a recovery of the tourism industry and Jamaica´s battered labour market is not in sight.

In everyday life, Jamaicans seem more crisis-proven to the lockdown than Europeans do: Dengue fever, Zika, Chikungunya, but also earthquakes and hurricanes give the islanders a certain resilience towards drama. Disinfectants sold out quickly, but there were no hoarding attempts of toilet paper or other daily supplies. Jamaican inventiveness is particularly evident in the marginalized inner cities, where social distancing is a privilege only few can afford. Corner shops sell their goods via cable pulleys, while downtown shopping arcades are equipped with self-created disinfection stations. The privilege of those who are able to lock themselves away in their upper class town houses while still earning money from “doing home office” brings the everyday socio-economic inequalities on the island to the fore. The crisis illustrates the large gap between rich and poor in Jamaica, where the middle class is a “non-existent” social class as many have immigrated to North America. In dealing with the pandemic, the socio-economically impoverished Jamaican people can only rely on their common sense, unwavering trust in God and the traditional usage of herbal tinctures and teas.
 

Closed Borders = No Food?

Rastafari is one of those cultural groups in Jamaica that actively preserve traditional knowledge and an alternative autonomous lifestyle; interestingly these groups are often consulted whenever national health is at stake. "We have been preparing for this day for a long time. I advise everyone to become independent from the system as soon as possible", explains Demot Fagan, leader and controversial prophet of the Haile Selassie School of Vision, a Rasta camp located in the Blue Mountains just above Jamaica´s capital city Kingston. In an interview with the Jamaican TV station (PBCJ), Fagan says that the glitterati of the international world press and many agro-tourists have been coming for years to his self-sufficient camp to understand his alternative outlook on life. His solution lies in regionally and self-sufficiently cultivated vegetarian food, fruits and vegetables: for Corona, for the climate crisis, for the extinction of species worldwide. The situation in Jamaica agrees with Fagan`s ideas insofar as the island has great difficulties with food supplies due to the closure of its borders.

While the local cabbage is withering in the fields, the crisis shows the disadvantages of the one-sided economic orientation towards tourism. Since local agriculture has long been neglected by the government and is less competitive due to high taxes, eighty percent of food has to be imported, mainly from the USA. Industrialized food products with high sugar, salt and fat contents that are the cause of widespread cardiovascular diseases as well as diabetes and obesity. Genetically modified and often low quality canned products that herbs traditionalists and organic fanatics like Rasta-chief Fagan renounce wholeheartedly. Here too, the limits of the one-sided orientation towards the USA and the lack of health education on the part of the Jamaican government are evident.

 

^{Fig. 3: Traditional Jamaican outdoor cooking}

While the socio-economic inequality will worsen through the rise of food prices, the United States are already rethinking their export strategies in order to maintain their own national food security. While the Trump administration takes the United States out of international competition, China has an easy job in Jamaica. Beijing is gaining local reputation with the supply of medical equipment and protective gear. Since a couple of years, the Caribbean is becoming a hotspot for Chinese investments and infrastructural programs, however, the Corona crisis potentially opens up a high risk corridor for China getting even more access into Jamaica’s fragile economic structure.

Meanwhile, local food security has become a slogan of Jamaican farmer initiatives and social activists, who are trying to fight against climate change. Now “eating local” is experiencing a boost in the awareness of Jamaica´s public. Before tourism, the Jamaican economy was long dominated by agriculture. The crisis now forces politicians to revive the neglected local sector for national self-sufficiency. What has been formerly ridiculed as an idealized niche of people such as Rastafari follower Fagan now comes to the forefront of Jamaica’s socio-economic policy. Border closures and food security concerns affect traditional markets and traders of agricultural products; increased competition among farmers is another worrisome component. Exploitation and under-investment of the agribusiness will have devastating effects on the island. Now more than ever, Jamaica has an opportunity to invest in local agriculture that could improve climate and crisis resistance, while minimizing its dependence on imports from other regions of the world. Currently, the USA decides what and if a large majority of Jamaicans eat. COVID-19 represents the greatest opportunity in the history of the island to become independent of imported alimentation.

Lisa Johnson, IRTG Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces, University of Trier

Chronicles of the Living Borders: shared urban space of Gorizia (IT) and Nova Gorica (SLO) (Svetlana Buko, DOBA Business School), 07/05/20

What is happening due to COVID-19 on the borders locally, specifically on the 199 km of current Italian-Slovenian border in the heart of Europe? This border is often called a former frontier line of western capitalistic democracies and socialist word or the southern part of the “iron curtain.” This place has tangled uneasy historical heritage stories and truths of Italian-Yugoslavian border in the past, yet single EU space since 2004 with open and undefended borders of neighboring countries – Italy and Slovenia. This observation BorderObs focuses on one section of the border, namely, unique shared urban space of the Italian city Gorizia and Slovenian city Nova Gorica.

The shared border space (Nova Gorica, Slovenia – Gorizia, Italy) has five spots for Italian-Slovenian border crossings within city limits and one shared square, where border evolved from line of separation to the place for communication within EU. Border was open for over a decade, many community projects are focused on the cross-border cooperation (including a recent project Go2025 for the European Capital of Culture Candidacy), people cross border daily of work, pleasure, sport, education. On the Slovenian side many businesses (casinos, gas stations, shops, and restaurants) work with majority of the Italian clients. Cross-border daily realities include living in Slovenia/working in Italy, living in Italy/shopping in Slovenia; children going to schools/sport centers cross-border; local ownership of the properties (apartments, farmlands, vineyards) on both sides.

This specific part of the border Gorizia (Italy) – Nova Gorica (Slovenia) is unique because unlike many other borders, this one runs through the shared urban space of the city fabric: a) there are continuities of streets crossing the border; b) there is a square shared by two cities, the symbol of EU unification; c) there are parks connecting green spaces flows; d) there are cycling/jogging routes linking Slovenian and Italian urban and natural spaces as one shared outdoor environment.

 

^{Photos: Svetlana Buko, April 2020}

 

 

For many years the state borders of neighboring countries remained practically invisible: with a few remaining checkpoint building either converted into museums or into community/art centers; old fences here and there with walking passages through the back yards, old parks, green areas by the shared river, back streets and farmlands. 

 

When Italy announced "red zone" due to the COVID-19 epidemic, many new issues surfaced in the cross-border life. With the epidemics news and Italian quarantine, Slovenian government considered evoking the control of the national border for safety reasons (COVID-19 disease spread control) and implemented new regulations for human traffic. There were a lot of local questions asked related to the new uncertain realities and interruptions: how decisions are made to close/open borders? How the control is implemented at the checkpoints? What are the appropriate control measures and instruments to carry out the decisions? What are the evolving perceptions of “us vs. them” on different sides of the border?

 

Physical changes in the urban cross-border space:
 

1.    Checkpoints are back to life with physical concrete blocks and guard stations.

2.    Common shared urban space Transalpina Square/Trg Evrope/"Europe Square", symbol of the EU unification, cut in half by the metal fence.

3.    Fences are up again with restrictive signs everywhere: in the cycling paths, pedestrian flows, park alleys.

4.    New urban space aesthetics: holes in the old fences are patched up with orange net. These patches are visible along all the borders, on one hand, giving a colorful view of the physically divided space, and on the other hand, reminding all the locals where they crossed that border by foot, bicycle, jogging, walking in the nature etc.

Tangible obstacles are back between Italians and Slovenians. All these visible border aspects evolved day by day, taking different shapes and forms. Consequently, in 40 days life was physically changing on both sides. Border slowly re-surfaced, bringing new tangible aspects. Same goes for the perceptions, comments, discussion and feelings of locals on both sides in this difficult quarantine circumstance. Physical and mental distance created different discourses of “us and them” on different sides of the border. This impacted the social distance and immediately led to constructions of new social reactions and perceptions among locals. 

^{Photos: Svetlana Buko, April 2020}

 

 

Living urban space changed every day:
 

• Restrictive signs were placed on all the new fences/check points in Slovenian and in Italian to inform the locals on both sides of the border that the only official passing point is Vrtojba (motorway pass) and for about a week there was a silence on both sides of the border.
• Journalists from Ljubljana and Trieste visited the border now and then, taking a few photos and interviewing locals about how they feel – tracked a few stories in Italian and Slovenian media, interviewing locals on both sides of the border.
• Local narratives in the societies naturally evolved: during this first week, there was a lot of informal talking done on both sides of the border, capturing differences in perceptions of the current stages of border live. "Blame game: who is wrong and who is right" is definitely taking place and impacting the view of "us vs. them".
• The next interesting step was made by local activists who brought flowers-roses (Symbol of Nova Gorca) and decorated the fence, and restrictive signs, brining in some positive unification vibes.
• During the second week people started to find the way to meet at the border, including cases of cross-border love: separated by the flense, couples making dates with champagne on the formerly shared square.
• Local organizations and leaders eventually found the way to communicate about the closed borders with a positive tone, reiterate collaboration efforts and encourage the locals on both sides of the border. Leaders/Mayors of Gorizia (Italy) and Nova Gorica (Slovenia) met on the common/square connecting the cities, made a unification statement talking over the fence of the border. Both leaders reiterated that what is decided in capitals - Rome and Ljubljana has a direct impact on the local life on the border, however, but locally people experience divisions in a different more personal way, dealing with this daily.
• Community power also stimulated different groups of people for action: artists and activists found the way to connect across the borders with flowers, photos, letters, children drawing, and musical concerts.

Cross-border cooperation project leaders re-shaped their “borderless” moto, accepting new realities and utilizing technology/social media for streamlining connections: organized virtual café with both mayors via live facebook stream, started free online courses of Slovenian and Italian via social media streaming, supported artists with the delivery of the unification art messages (Go2025 project).

Every day was different; perceptions of locals on both sides of the border evolved over this time and surfaced interesting trends of the cross-border life. Observing 40 days of this Italian-Slovenia border was a fascinating experience tracing back to the historical memories of the Italian-Yugoslav borders on one hand, and reflecting on the connections people and organizations have developed as a common shared place after 2004.

Svetlana Buko, associate professor (docent) of intercultural management, DOBA Business School, Slovenia

 

Those who are confined, are also the most mobile! (Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, Grenoble Alpes University), 06/05/20

Spatial confinement is equally a question of borders. Although immobile, those who are confined at the same time "have access". In this sense, being able to confine oneself is equivalent to being able to legally cross a border. Both require that one belongs to a small circle of "actors" of globalization

Since the identification of coronavirus (COVID-19), spatial isolation has been a fundamental political recommendation. What is now recommended and referred to as "social distancing", requires that people maintain a minimal physical distance between themselves and other people. Of course, this constitutes geographical separation. Compliance with this recommendation assumes that we have a degree of control over our living conditions and our home environment. To confine something is to draw boundaries around it, with the implication that any boundary we draw around ourselves surrounds a central, stable being! Implicit in this political recommendation therefore, is a very traditional political understanding of space which is absolutely at odds with any analysis of contemporary mobility.

Today, only those living in accommodation large enough to ensure that anyone living there need not go out can be thought of as confined. Simply having two places of residence, as might be the case for children in shared custody for example, or non-cohabiting couples, is already inconsistent with this normative framework… This extreme version of a sedentary lifestyle has now become a positive form of physical marginalization because of course, it’s voluntary. Indeed, this doesn’t apply to the homeless, nor those who find themselves living in crowded conditions. In particular, think of those who are required to reside in a prison or detention center, forcibly separated from the rest of society and kept in an enclosed place where paradoxically, confinement is impossible. In these circumstances, the huge density of residents manifests itself as a harmful level of overcrowding.

 

 

Those who "have access"

Despite the growing feeling of frustration amongst those who have now spent a month deprived of access to the multitude of places they usually frequent, the confinement we’re talking about here is in no way comparable to imprisonment! Indeed, if we look at things more closely, we see that this confinement applies only to those who can live within their own four walls because they do so whilst remaining fully connected! Still having ongoing access to resources from the safety of your own home assumes that you’re able work remotely, you’re retired or being compensated for partial or long-term unemployment, or are able to take paid sick leave. We therefore remain bound to a market system, in turn linked to a financial network which "gives us access". It is this which enables certain individuals to continue to consume remotely (do their shopping as close as possible to their home, have shopping delivered, etc.).

Of course, certain goods and services, in particular non-tangible ones, are now inaccessible – cosmetic treatments, social activities, cultural events. And despite the great wave of content in these areas which has now been made available online, such digital versions simply can’t live up to their real-life equivalents and re-create the intensity of the connections which activities in these sectors usually stimulate. Yet these "second class" equivalents remain a luxury, a protective digital shell which guarantees the feasibility of our apparent imprisonment. This economic development is part of a process of rendering the connections within the network invisible, driven by the capitalist system which finances them. How easy it is to place an order on a large online platform without thinking of the employees working in the warehouses, making the deliveries, ensuring the good functioning of the networks on which our supply system depends!
 

Rendered informal, even illegal

So those who are confined are the individuals who even though they are immobilized, "have access". At the opposite end of the social spectrum, are those who are unproductive, those involved in informal work, or even illegal activities, those who can no longer sell manual or physical labor (housework, construction), who are not involved in our health systems, and all those who have difficulty connecting to liberal society. Indeed, we can see these rapid turnarounds taking place around us – the student from a modest background who doesn’t have a computer or a good internet connection at home, often confined to a tiny bedroom where they now find themselves deprived even of the cheap college food on which they survive. They can quite quickly lose their foothold in the virtuous dynamic which they had worked so hard to be part of, ejected from the mobile world to which they aspired.

Paradoxically, those who are today able to confine themselves in good conditions are exactly the same people who had access to freedom of movement in pre-COVID times. In other words, the same people who possess a degree of global autonomy enabling them to choose the interactions which globalize them. To re-use a term which I coined with Frédéric Giraut to describe our unequal ability to cross borders, these are precisely the people who possess an elevated degree of "borderity."

Being able to confine oneself derives from the same process as being able to legally cross a border. It’s a question of two modes of belonging to the small circle of "actors" of globalization. The two sides of "differential inclusion" (Sandro Mezzadra) now impact our social entity. Far from democratic equality, the allocation of political rights, in particular access to full and complete citizenship, seems to depend on a person’s ability to demonstrate his or her individual utility in the quest for globalization. Conveniently put to one side the fact that those who produce low cost jeans or telephones, cotton or minerals, act in this interconnected economy just as much as the globalized elites. Not seeing the web of complex connections within our world system, of which COVID-19 is a symptom; failing to acknowledge the materiality of the goods which drive the digital network upon which our confinement depends, is simply a case of sticking our heads in the sand.

Those who are confined, that’s to say those with the most "borderity," are also amongst those who have the greatest environmental footprint! Coming out of confinement will not be a process of re-opening borders, but of making connections visible again. Detailed analysis of the territorial inequalities throughout the mobile world which produced COVID-19, must be a vital step in laying the foundations of the social justice required to envision a life "after COVID ".
 

This article was first published in French on Libération.
 

Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, Pacte – social sciences research centre, Grenoble Alpes University

Unilateral Multilingualism in the Saar-Lor-Lux Region in Times of Closed Borders (Philipp Krämer, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt / Oder), 20/04/20

Text available in German. 

Philipp Krämer, Viadrina-Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt / Oder

The Franco-German border at the time of Covid-19: the end of a common area? (F. Berrod, B. Wassenberg, M. Chovet, University of Strasbourg), 20/04/20

Text available in French.

Frédérique Berrod, Sciences Po, University of Strasbourg
Birte Wassenberg, Sciences Po, University of Strasbourg
Morgane Chovet, Droit de l'Union européenne, University of Strasbourg

Not crossing the border: recommendation or ban? (Martin Unfried, Maastricht University), 16/04/20

During the Easter weekend there was a lack of clarity about what the rules are at the German-Dutch border. What is actually still allowed when it comes to travelling from the Netherlands to Germany and vice versa? Both the government in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and in the Netherlands have communicated recommendations not to enter the country at Easter. Dear tourists: stay away! That sounded like good advice. Or was it a ban? That makes quite a difference. But it wasn't clear from the communication from both governments which of the two, advice or ban, was meant exactly. This lead to confusing situations at the border.

The newspaper reports of the weekend are also somewhat confusing in this respect. There is talk of the Dutch Marechaussee at the border who sent German drivers back because they only wanted to go shopping. That is not really in accordance with the rules, because the Netherlands has not yet issued an entry ban that would not allow you to enter the country without good reason. Or has it?

Germany: entry ban, The Netherlands: no entry ban

There were prohibitions for certain areas, for example for the Heuvelland region between Aachen and Maastricht. But there is no general ban on travelling to The Netherlands. And in NRW? It was striking that Prime Minister Laschet proudly announced that he had ensured that the border remained open, which in fact it is not. Because since the Federal Government's decision of 6 April, access to Germany is no longer allowed without a valid reason. At least, that applies to people without residence in Germany. By the way, this means that, in principle, it is the same situation as when entering Belgium.

There is a general entry ban in North Rhine-Westphalia and exceptions are made only for special groups such as border commuters and lorry drivers. This prevents Dutch people crossing the border to refuel, go for a walk or go shopping. This is not a recommendation, but a ban. However, this has not been properly communicated. Maybe Ministerpräsident Laschet, when he said that the border stays open, meant that goods transport and border workers are not affected. There is really only one difference with the Belgian situation: at the border with North Rhine-Westphalia there are no official controls. Or rather: there are no direct checks at the border, but random checks in the border area. This does not contribute to clarity either.

Quarantine rules also unclear

And who should be quarantined? In the next few days, the subject of quarantine is likely to raise many questions. The new regulation in NRW (dated 9 April) stipulates that people who have been abroad for more than 72 hours and then enter Germany must go directly to their own house or other accommodation and stay there for 14 days. They must report to the health office of their neighbourhood or town. This is the general rule. What will now lead to many questions are the exceptions: border commuters, business travellers, service technicians, lorry drivers, diplomats, travellers on their way to another EU country, and so on. This causes many groups of people to have questions. Another reason for clear communication from the authorities.
 

First publication on the blog of Maastricht University
 

Martin Unfried, Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross border cooperation and Mobility, Maastricht University

 

Linguistic rebordering: Constructing COVID-19 as an external threat (Eva Nossem, Saarland University), 09/04/20

Last week (March 25, 2020), the G7 countries’ failure to issue a joint statement because of Washington’s insistence on using the label ‘Wuhan virus’ (Hudson and Mekhennet 2020) hit the headlines, and the U.S. administration has been working hard over the last weeks to enforce ‘Chinese virus’ as the official label for the coronavirus during their press conferences. This move of rebranding the virus by using a specific ‘placemark’ is just one of the many strategies of apportioning the blame for the (spread of the) virus to a specific place/country and to construct the disease as a foreign-grown threat to the nation. 

In this vein, Washington’s attempts have been happily taken up in nationalist politics in other parts of the world: Jair Bolsonaro’s son aggressively attacked China by blaming it for the pandemics (Phillips 2020). The oftentimes criticized Italian TV reached a new all-time low when the former minister of internal affairs and right-wing politician Matteo Salvini and presenter Barbara D’Urso recited a prayer for all the Italian death cases of the pandemics (Rubino 2020), and, in the same show, Alessandra Mussolini, notorious supporter of her grandfather’s fascist politics, silenced the invited virologists and experts by insisting the ‘Wuhan virus’ were created in a secret lab by the Chinese (Drogo 2020). Countless other examples could be put forward, and the list is getting longer every day.
 

Naming as linguistic (re-)bordering

If we understand ‘borders’ as “symboli[zing] a social practice of spatial differentiation,” (van Houtum & van Naerssen 2001: 126), ‘bordering’ as “processes which include modifications of the socio-spatial, dynamic, and political organization and order on different scales” (Nienaber “(De-/Re-)Bordering” 2020, forthcoming; my translation), and ‘rebordering’ as the “strengthening of existing borders and also the emergence of new types and functions of borders” (ibid.; my translation), then the practice of naming in this specific case can be understood as a linguistic practice of (re-)bordering, as ‘linguistic (re-)bordering’ processes: The disease is assigned to a specific location outside of one’s own borders and thus created as something foreign, which is then seen as a threat to the nation from the outside.

It is easily understandable that this divisionary naming tactics does not offer any solution to the problem or any help in the fight against the pandemic. Quite on the contrary: Along with the scapegoating of China, discrimination and racist attacks against Asian people have been on the rise in the West; with the Italians (and in our local region also our French neighbors from Grand Est) being the next in line to come under attack (see e.g. the assertion by the British physician and TV star Christian Jessen that the Italians used Corona to have a “long siesta” (Harrison 2020)).
 

A short history of stigmatizing naming of diseases

All the noise about the naming of the virus can be best confronted by critically putting the tactics of naming, particularly of diseases, in a broader context. This specific virus might be new, but scapegoating through naming surely isn’t. In 2015, the WHO already issued guidelines for the naming of diseases “to minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people,” (WHO 2015) in which it criticized stigmatizing naming practices and clarified that the authority of naming lies with them: “The final name of any new human disease is assigned by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is managed by WHO” (ibid.).
 

The Spanish flu

The history of naming diseases after geographic locations and particularly nations mainly seems to go hand in hand with the development of ‘the nation,’ dating back to the 19th century. One of the most famous pandemics so far, the Influenza pandemic of 1918-20, still today is commonly known in English as the ‘Spanish Influenza.’ When the disease hit Spain, the “Spaniards called the highly contagious disease ‘The Soldier of Naples’ after a catchy song popular at the time[,]” explains Shafer in his article in the Washington Post on March 23, 2020, in which he fans out the different naming practices of the disease. When the disease spread all over the world, it was rebranded as ‘Spanish Influenza,’ not because of its origins, which probably were in the U.S., but because of the severity with which it hit Spain. The OED states:

^{Fig. 1: Oxford English Dictionary: “Spanish influenza.”  (OED)}

In an article published by CNN’s Harmeet Kaur, the hypothesis is proposed that maybe Spain was not hit worse than other European states but that it simply had a more open and honest handling of the disease and was more honest than other states during the instable situation of crisis at that time.

Shafer also offers a broader view and outlines the naming practices for the 1920s influenza in other countries and languages: “[N]ations were pointing fingers at one another. Spain also called the virus the ‘French flu,’ claiming French visitors to Madrid had brought it. ‘Germans called it the Russian Pest,’ wrote Kenneth C. Davis in his book, ‘More Deadly Than War.’ In a precursor to today’s crisis, ‘The Russians called it the Chinese Flu.’” (Shafer 2020)

An American Disease?

In drawing a parallel to the current naming discussions, Shafer smirkingly suggests that COVID-19 should be referred to as the ‘American Disease,’ weren’t it for the fact that the label had already been taken in earlier times, namely in the 17th century as a name for syphilis, as he quotes from Blount’s dictionary (1656). As the definition by Blount shows, the ‘American Disease’ also ran under different names, blaming at the same time the Indies, Spain, Naples, and France: “American Disease. The great Pox, brought first from the Indies by the Spanyards into Christendom, and at the Siege of ??????, they bestowed it on the French their enemies in the yeer 1528.” (Shafer 2020)
 

Names and hypothetic origins of syphilis

As already briefly hinted at in the quote above, syphilis is considered one of the first diseases which spread globally. Even though met with doubt and branded ‘the Columbian theory for syphilis,’ there is much to suggest that Columbus brought it to Europe together with potatoes, corn, and tobacco, and in exchange for over 30 disease he and his crew introduced to the Americas such as measles, smallpox, influenza, decimating immense numbers of the Indigenous population. A major breakout took place during the Renaissance among the French army when they invaded Naples, where it was commonly referred to as il mal francese, Latinized as morbus Gallicus, relying on geographical naming. The common name in use still today dates back to the epic poem “Syphilis sive morbus gallicus” published in 1530, which unfolds an explanatory story on the origin of the disease as a punishment by the gods (Pou 2013).
 

More pandemics, more stigmatizing naming 

Also the earliest influenza pandemic for which detailed records are available is commonly named after its assumed origin, namely the ‘Russian flu,’ which hit the world in 1889-90 (MSN Encarta 2009). At the end of the 1950s, an influenza pandemic spread from China all over the world, which became known as the ‘Asian flu,’ followed a decade later by the next influenza pandemic, then called ‘Hong Kong flu’ in the West (ibid.). 
 

Cross-border efforts instead of (linguistic) rebordering

All summed up, the outbreak of major influenza pandemics seems as predictable as the subsequent practices of scapegoating and stigmatizing naming. As the above examples demonstrate, not only has the practice of assigning a specific geographical marker always been rather disputable in terms of its truth content but it also has been useless in fighting pandemics. To this day, there hasn’t been a single case of infection that has been prevented by being labeled as French, Italian, American, Russian, or Chinese. Quite on the contrary: The presumptuous othering practice of allocating diseases to something ‘foreign’ contributes to giving the own population a false sense of security and consequently an oftentimes careless attitude which might prove particularly dangerous at a later time. This practice of disease-based othering, which might be termed ‘linguistic rebordering,’ also entails that every state and community has to learn from their own experiences. It also impedes them from learning from each other – a fatal error, as we can see now. What we need more than ever, instead of divisive rebordering, are joint forces and common efforts, particularly across borders.

Stay safe everyone out there!

Eva Nossem, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University
 

This blog entry is part of the UniGR-CBS working paper vol. 8 “The pandemic of nationalism and the nationalism of pandemics,” published by Eva Nossem on 22 April 2020. Download
 

References

Drogo, Giovanni: "Alessandra Mussolini si scopre virologa e ci spiega il complotto del laboratorio di Wuhan da Barbara D’Urso." Next quotidiano, March 30, 2020; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Harrison, Ellie: "Coronavirus: Dr Christian Jessen says Italians are using pandemic as an excuse for ‘long siesta’." The Independent, March 13, 2020; last accessed 04/02/2020.

Hudson, John and Souad Mekhennet: "G-7 failed to agree on statement after U.S. insisted on calling coronavirus outbreak ‘Wuhan virus’." The Washington Post, March 25, 2020; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Kaur, Harmeet: "Yes, we long have referred to disease outbreaks by geographic places. Here’s why we shouldn’t anymore." CNN, March 28, 2020.

MSN Encarta: “Influenza.” 29 October 2009; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Nienaber, Birte (2020): “(De-, Re-) Bordering. UniGR-CBS Glossary Border Studies.” [Forthcoming].

OED: “Spanish influenza.”; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Phillips, Tom: “Bolsonaro’s son enrages Beijing by blaming China for coronavirus crisis.” The Guardian, March 19, 2020; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Pou, Rebecca: “Syphilis, or the French Disease.” The New York Academy of Medicine; last accessed 04/08/2020.

Rubino, Monica: “Tv del dolore, Salvini e D'Urso sommersi di critiche sui social per l'Eterno riposo recitato in diretta.” La Repubblica, March 30, 2020; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Shafer, Ronald G.: “Spain hated being linked to the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. Trump’s ‘Chinese virus’ label echoes that.” The Washington Post, March 23, 2020; last accessed 04/01/2020.

Van Houtum, Henk and Ton van Naerssen (2002): “Bordering, Ordering and Othering.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol. 93, No. 2, pp. 125–136.

WHO: “WHO issues best practices for naming new human infectious diseases.” May 08, 2015; last accessed 04/01/2020.
 

Corona – new challenges and perspectives for border policies and cross-border governance (Nora Crossey, Saarland University), 08/04/20

Text available in German. 

Nora Crossey, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University

The national border “blurred” by Covid-19 (G. Hamez, F. Morel-Doridat, K. Oudina, M. Le Calvez, M. Boquet, N. Dorkel, N. Greiner, S. de Pindray d'Ambelle, University of Lorraine), 07/04/20 

Text available in French.

Grégory Hamez, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine 
Frédérique Morel-Doridat, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine
Kheira Oudina, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine
Marine Le Calvez, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine
Mathias Boquet, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine
Nicolas Dorkel, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine
Nicolas Greiner, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine
Sabrina de Pindray d'Ambelle, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Lorraine

Reflections on a Boundless Critter in a Bordered World (Rebekka Kanesu, University of Trier), 06/04/20

The coronavirus (aka COVID-19), our new freaky co-habitant is still a mystery to many of us. However, we do know that it loves to travel through air, hang out on the soft skin of our hands and reproduce, especially in the most vulnerable bodies. Corona doesn't know borders, doesn't care about skin color, gender, race, age, education or sexual preference. Corona loves us equally. But we are not equal. While some people (academic folks like us) suddenly realize their privileged positions of being able to do thought-work from the comfort of their cozy homes, others like nurses, doctors, cashiers, mail man and women, factory workers, farmers, truck drivers and many more, still need to go out and must take the risk of getting sick. While some governments can afford to mobilize huge amounts of money to save and support national businesses and invest in public health infrastructure, other countries with weaker economies and less stable political and institutional structures may suffer severe health risks, if their virus coping strategies fail. Though Corona loves us equally, it painfully points to the many inequalities that prevail in our families, regions, societies and on a global scale.

This especially comes to the fore when we look at the many border relations that currently experience manifold transformations. The virus is a cosmopolitan traveler who doesn’t know the concept of borders, nations or states – contrary to Paasi’s idea of boundedness (2009) we might even call it a ‘boundless’ critter in a borderless world. In a paradoxical manner, this  ‘global player’ made us see the bordered spaces – before only existent for the poor and less privileged – which are now re-emerging for the mobile hosts of the virus who, embedded in a global network, carried the invisible stowaway across many borders, coming from their business trips or their ski holidays.  

Viral immobility: (re)bordering within and beyond the Greater Regions

Especially living and working in the Greater Region, the border region between Germany, Luxemburg, France and Belgium, lets us realize how ordinary and normal, everyday border-crossing has become. Now, that the German and French borders are closed, cross-border events and non-work-related meetings do not take place. The very common economic praxis of leaving Germany to buy cheap cigarettes and fuel in Luxemburg is not a proper reason to cross the border anymore. Likewise, my flat mate whose girlfriend lives in the much-affected French Grand Est region is obliged to restrict the relation to online dating. The (re)bordering processes in the Schengen spaces that are otherwise characterized by daily border-crossing and cross-border relations, change where we go, who we can see, what be buy and how we love.

Nevertheless, it seems that most people in this tiny capsule of the Greater Region are still able to cope quite well with the current situation. When zooming out to the fringes of the European Union, much more devastating situations become apparent. The borders of Fortress Europe have already been closed long before the outbreak of the pandemic, and migrants and refugees who seek to enter this fortress take high risks in crossing the potentially deadly endless borderscapes of the Mediterranean Sea. While the virus made borders again tangible for those who routinely cross the soft borders of the Schengen space, these borders have been rock solid for many non-Schengen citizens before and probably after the ‘curve’ has flattened.
On the other hand, accounts from inner European refugee camps like ‘Moria’ camp on Lesbos island (Greece), tell a sinister story of overcrowded places where health problems are always present and diseases caused by poor hygiene like scabies, lice and diarrhea spread easily. For people living in these camps, immobility and restriction of movement did not just start with the corona crisis. Being confined to the tent town, possibilities to distance socially or actually physically are non-existent what makes proper protection against the virus as well as quarantine impossible.

The USA, the potential future epicenter of covid-19 outbreaks has also closed its borders to protect its citizens and still treats (illegal) migrants almost as unwelcome as the virus itself. The state continues to do ‘business as usual’ and deports rejected Guatemalan asylum seekers across their borders and back to their country of origin, which the Guatemalan state tried to block unsuccessfully because people fear the import of the virus that potentially travels with the returnees and could be extremely devastating for the country with its poor healthcare system. 

Who’s lives count – which crisis matters?

While the wealthy mobile people start to realize their privileges, those whose bodies have been prone to disease, violence and imposed restrictions of movements for a long time, continue to suffer, with covid-19 being only one more threat on a long list of hazards. Looking at border relations in these viral times, the question which comes to matter the most is: who’s lives count? Who is eligible to proper health care, to freedom of movement, to a safe home? Who’s death is pushed in the background, soon to be forgotten in the face of corona virus, the deadly critter that dominates all our news and media? What kind of “necropolitics” (Mbembe, 2003) does this crisis reveal?

Though this might all sound quite cynical, isn’t it good that this crazy critter shakes us up and uncovers our lethargy and inactiveness that made us ignore and neglect all those lives of whom many now turn out to be ‘relevant for the system’? Aren’t it often the border-crossing migrants who work as care-takers in hospitals and retirement homes or who help to harvest the crops we now fight over when we do panic shopping in the supermarket? So, instead of speaking of a migrant crisis, shouldn’t we finally start to cherish the work done by many migrants and begin to tackle the many real crises our new viral co-habitant unveils – the crisis of unbound capitalism, the crisis of underpaid labor, the crisis of environmental destruction, the crisis of domestic violence, the crisis of global health?

Corona divides: old boundaries in new shapes

In the wake of the current processes of border securitization, strengthened nationalist rhetoric and reterritorializations, we may ask what kind of border- and boundary configurations and practices will occur and how they will affect this amalgam of crises. In his paper on the ‘borderless world’, Anssi Paasi reflects on the role of the state as an “organizer of territorial spaces and creator of meaning” (2009, p. 213). He argues that „in terms of territoriality the state is many things: it is a power container, a wealth container and a cultural container, and each of these forms of territoriality may put a different emphasis on boundaries” (ibid., p. 229f). So what kind of boundaries do states now envision and perform with reference to the corona virus?

This becomes especially evident in the way states create coping mechanisms to contain the pandemic. While in Germany, discourses especially focus on age boundaries, by advising to keep safe distance from grandparents and elderly neighbors, in Panama City control of movement functions through divisions along binary gender lines where females are allowed to leave the house on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and males can go outside on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Columbia, on the other hand, tries to organize mobility in public spaces according to National ID numbers, which creates boundaries between those who hold the citizenship and those without proper documents.

Traces of a boundless critter: solidarity as possibility?

When we have outpaced the virus, what traces will covid-19 leave? Will it change border and boundary relations profoundly or will we go ‘back to normal’? Will we be able to close our eyes when this tiny invisible critter pushes our gaze directly into the cracks of the modern/colonial world system that Walter Mignolo (2000) continuously tires to break up through critical border thinking? Reflecting on the practice of border thinking he states that „border thinking that leads to decoloniality is of the essence to unveil that the system of knowledge, beliefs, expectations, dreams, and fantasies upon which the modern/colonial world was built is showing, and will continue to show, its unviability.“ (Mignolo, 2012 [2000], p. ix). The corona virus helps us to practice border thinking as it exposes the unviability of a system that is based on inequalities, exploitation and differential inclusion that harm the many and privilege the few. Can we imagine other border relations; is another border, another world, “another possible” possible (Escobar, 2020, p. ix)? Moreover, how would the “pluriversal politics” (ibid) look like were we to imagine not only clever ideas but also transformative actions?

It seems that the boundless critter can teach us more about ourselves than about its own being. Along with all the tragedy and struggles we are currently witnessing, we also experience acts of non-bureaucratic, creative and powerful, transversal solidarity, acts of care and cross-boundary communication. Portugal temporarily grants full citizenship rights to all migrants and asylum seekers to permit full access to the country’s healthcare. Spanish police forces perform dance choreographies on the street for residents in quarantine, in Italy people give joint concerts from balconies, German hospitals take corona patients from neighboring countries, everywhere neighbors go shopping for each other, people post their social distancing stories on the boundless internet via Instagram and Twitter, and friends meet for virtual parties.

As my own transnational family – many of them former refugees who crossed many borders – is dispersed all over the globe, we nowadays share many impressions and experiences about the current situation in our What’s App group. Memes, videos and comments all infected with a good amount of humor and a blinking eye. Our form of solidarity – the global crisis in a (virtual) nutshell. Or, with the words of Maria Puig de la Bellacasa: "Nothing holds together in a liveable way without caring relationships" (2011, p. 100). So, let us care and let us learn how to become-with (and not despite) each other during and beyond the Corona crisis.

Rebekka Kanesu, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Trier

References

De la Bellacasa, Maria Puig (2010): Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things, Social Studies of Science, 41(1): 85-106.

Escobar, Arturo (2020): Puliversal Politics. The Real and the Possible, Durham University Press: Durham, London. 

Mbembe, Achille (2003): Necropolitics, Public Culture 15(1): 11-40.

Mignolo, Walter D. (2012 [2000]): Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton studies in culture/power/history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Paasi, Anssi (2009): Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’: border studies, power and the anatomy of territory, Journal of Power, 2(2): 213-234

 

The coronavirus and the erosion of certainties (Florian Weber, Saarland University), 06/04/20

Article available in German.

Florian Weber, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University

Borders in Times of Covid-19 (Christian Wille, University of Luxembourg), 03/04/20

Territorial borders and social demarcation processes are becoming dramatically more important during the coronavirus pandemic. A concise example is the 25^th anniversary of the Schengen Agreement that coincides with border control tightening and the closure of internal EU borders. The “Guidelines for border management measures to protect health and ensure the availability of goods and essential services” issued by the EU Commission on March 16^th, 2020 currently ensure that despite the re/bordering processes, the borders remain open for tightly timed supply chains, cross-border commuters, and for a country’s own citizens.

However, these corridors remain closed to those seeking protection, i.e. to “foreigners,” and the nation states are currently concentrating on their own interests. When it comes to the procurement of medical supplies, national protectionism and selfishness appear currently to be at the foreground, for example when export bans are announced or protective masks are confiscated. Such renationalization processes – or rather: the preoccupation with the nation – also mean that no government is committed to opening the borders for refugees. They remain in camps on the Greek islands, on the Turkish-Greek border, and elsewhere in cramped quarters in severely unhygienic conditions and it is only a matter of time before a humanitarian disaster breaks out there.

At the same time, there is a certain degree of solidarity can be seen between the EU countries, which, at the end of March, slowly seems to be picking up speed. This includes not only the increasingly articulated concern to act in a coordinated manner both with the containment matters and the exit strategy. It is also shown in the increasing admission of critically ill patients from neighboring countries and the dispatch of medical supplies to particularly affected areas in other countries. The EU Commission has not failed to use its PR tools to emphasize the advantages of the union of the European countries: for example, regarding the concerted #FlattenTheCurve, the coordinated return of citizens abroad via charter flights, the provision of aid packages, or the joint procurement of medical equipment. Is it possible that the corona crisis, with its reflex to isolate oneself on the one hand and its so-called #EUSolidarity on the other hand, offers an opportunity to revive Europe?
 

Social boundaries

Social boundaries are made relevant in the current situation as categorizations, and sometimes in a dramatic way. One distinction that can be observed here is the one between essential workers on the one hand, who are often celebrated through new forms of collective solidarity as “everyday heroes,” and, on the other hand, the less essential workers who work in a more-or-less secure home office à la #SocialDistancing. This distinction, which also reflects a classification of the privileged and the less privileged, further points to questions of (in)equality: to what extent are we (un)equal in the face of the viral disease and why is it that the less privileged now by and large turn out to be systemically important? 

In addition, the vulnerability of people – usually measured in terms of age and pre-existing conditions – is another criterion for the b/ordering processes that can be observed: People are divided into risk groups and are therefore particularly worthy of protection or less worthy of protection, although this division does not prove to be all that reliable. Because even in young people, the infectious disease can become severe. Furthermore, social boundaries are drawn, some of which are fatal, due to the ongoing pandemic and increasing overload of health systems. Doctors have to decide who will be treated on an outpatient basis and who will be admitted and who will get a ventilator and who will not (anymore). Such classifications, which (can) represent borders between life and death, raise ethical questions.

In addition, categorizations that project “the other” as a threat or a cause of the viral disease must be critically examined (othering). A few weeks before the drastic protective measures were taken, Chinese restaurants were being avoided, there was talk of a “Chinese virus” (D. Trump) and the Mexican beer “Corona Extra” was left sitting on the shelves. Such observations may seem unimportant at first, but it is probably only a matter of time before right-wing populist forces mobilize similar categories of the constitutive other and position them for their own interests.
 

(Dis)continuities in Border Regions

Measures to contain the virus have paralyzed the economy and will have serious repercussions for employment and the labor market. After the initial slumps on the stock exchanges, businesses have cut their production, public facilities have switched to emergency mode, and workers have been urged to stay healthy by working from home in order to replace those on the front line who could become infected. The socio-economic ecosystem has gotten off track and the virus has revealed its fragility. This is particularly evident in border regions that are now more or less cut off from their neighbors due to border closure or reinforcement. For example, the German state of Brandenburg is suffering enormously from the closure of the German-Polish border, which immediately resulted in car and truck traffic jams lasting 15 to 20 hours, corresponding delivery delays and difficulties for commuters.

With a special certificate, cross-border commuters can use the border corridors, although fiscal problems can arise for those who work from home: After a certain number of days worked in the country of residence, the work is taxed according to the rules of the country of residence and the tax paid there too. This problem, which is problematic for cross-border commuters in Luxembourg, for example, even during virus-free times, was quickly resolved: Belgium, France and Germany have assured Luxembourg that they will not apply this taxation rule during the pandemic.
 

_{Fig. 1: Luxembourg City during the Covid 19 pandemic (photo: Christian Wille, April 2020)}
 

The Luxembourg government advocated for this because Luxembourg’s dependence on its neighboring countries has never been clearer than it is now: approx. 70% of the workforce in the health sector is made up of cross-border commuters (mostly from France), the absence of which would be fatal – they are essential in the truest sense of the word. It is therefore not surprising that the Prime Minister of Luxembourg personally thanked the cross-border commuters for their work in the Grand Duchy and assured his citizens that he has it on top authority that the border to France will remain passable for cross-border commuters. Such dependencies have also become virulent in Switzerland, which is why cross-border commuters continue to be admitted to the Alpine Republic and – just as in Luxembourg – considerations are being made as to whether cross-border commuters (with their families) can be accommodated in hotels at their place of work during the pandemic.

The pandemic certainly makes it clearer in border regions than elsewhere the extent to which joint action is necessary in the current crisis situation – but also afterwards. Current initiatives of this kind include mutual support in health care, such as the admission of critically ill people from Grand Est in Baden-Württemberg, Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, or Luxembourg. Or the establishment of the “Cross-Border Task Force Corona” between North Rhine-Westphalia, the Netherlands and Belgium for a coordinated approach to contain Covid-19 in the border area.
 

Post-Corona

It is to be expected that Europe and societies worldwide will change as a result of the viral disease and the drastic measures that have been implemented to combat it. This is already indicated by the current rhetoric that uses the term “crisis,” which, etymologically speaking, means nothing more than “decisive turn.” However, it is not yet clear in which direction such a turn will point. Will the experience of the pandemic raise awareness of unfettered globalization and thus demand more rules or supervision and control in the future? Will the shared moment of crisis and (cross-border) solidarity bring EU countries and border regions back together or closer together? Or will nationalisms continue to emerge and continued processes of renationalization characterize the post-corona era?

This is also connected to the question of the future of the Schengen area, which had already been hit during the so-called “migration crisis". On the occasion of its anniversary on March 26^th, 2020, the Luxembourg foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, pointed the way: “The rules of the Schengen area provide the framework for cooperation which will enable us to face this unprecedented challenge together. Therefore, I call upon all to restore Schengen without delay. The reintroduction of border controls at our common borders can only be occasional and temporary and must be done in accordance with the Treaties.”

Christian Wille, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, University of Luxembourg